High stakes gambler Ti Ke Tran – aka ‘Lucky Eddie’ or ‘Eddie the Blessed’ – faces multimillion-dollar tax bill

A Queensland high-roller who deposited and withdrew a staggering $58.7m from two casino accounts over three years has been slugged with a multimillion-dollar tax bill.

Poker player Eddie Ke Ti Tran. Picture: YouTube

He is known as “Lucky Eddie” or “Eddie the Blessed” in poker circles.

The ex-cafe owner claims he got lucky playing high stakes cash poker as a hobby, and he lived solely off his winnings for more than three years, splashing the cash on travel, hotels, and a home and a luxury car bought outright.

But the high-roller gambler who deposited and withdrew a staggering $58.7m from two casino accounts over three years, wasn’t so lucky when a Queensland-based tribunal member probed his finances.

Now he must pay a multimillion-dollar tax bill.

In her decision haded down on July 17, Administrative Review Tribunal of Australia senior member Jane Lye ruled Ti Ke (Eddie) Tran must pay his unpaid income tax for the years 2014 to 2017, mostly from “unexplained deposits” to his bank account.

Administrative Review Tribunal of Australia senior member Jane Lye

After the audit, the Commissioner of Taxation (CT) claimed he had taxable income over four years of $9.23m made up of $1.5m in 2014, $1.5m in 2015, $2.9m in 2016 and $3.3m in 2017.

Ms Lye concluded the sources of some cash repayments to Mr Tran’s accounts were “suspicious”.

The 49-year-old also failed to lodge tax returns in 2014, 2015 and 2016, the tribunal heard.

He must also pay hefty fines of more than 75 per cent of his tax bill to the ATO.

Mr Tran failed to prove in the tribunal that the CT’s assessment was excessive.

Ms Lye concluded that the Cambodian refugee failed to establish the source or sources of the money involved in “all his activities” over this time.

He deposited and withdrew $26.6m from accounts at the The Star, and deposited and withdrew $32.1m from accounts at Crown, the ATO told the tribunal, in evidence Ms Lye accepted.

Ms Lye described this as “remarkably high turnover” in Mr Tran’s casino cage accounts, where money and chips can be exchanged.

The ATO told the tribunal that $5.5m in cash deposited or used to buy chips at Crown and The Star “appeared to have no identifiable source”.

“The Tribunal has not been persuaded that Mr Tran has accounted for the sources of all his taxable income,” Ms Lye ruled.

“Mr Tran has not persuaded me on the balance of probabilities that all his activities (including the alleged loans or gifts to family and friends and fellow players) were funded solely from his gambling winnings”.

Ms Lye said some of the sources of Mr Tran’s funds for his gambling and the source of cash deposited into his accounts were “suspicious”, including the purported “repayment” of a loan of $223,700 in chips by Chinese businessman Wan Yong Nguyen.

Nguyen told the tribunal that he borrowed the chips from Mr Tran at Crown Melbourne in 2017 and repaid him a few days later.

Poker player Eddie Ke Ti Tran Picture YouTube

The CT argued there were large deposits to Mr Tran’s cage accounts for both The Star in Sydney and Crown Melbourne casinos which were unexplained, and suggested they came from “activities other than gambling”.

But Mr Tran claimed the deposits into his accounts were due to his massive poker wins and repayments of loans he claimed he gave to a large number of people, including fellow gamblers, family and friends.

Mr Tran told the tribunal it was normal for poker players to move large sums of money around, and he assumed that his poker winnings resulted from his ‘hobby’ and were not assessable and so had kept no records.

Mr Tran, who represented himself in the tribunal, took his tax fight to the tribunal after he was audited in 2017 and disputed the massive tax bill.

“Yes, I didn’t lodge tax returns in the early years but I wasn’t earning income in the sense the law intends,” Mr Tran told the tribunal.

“I wasn’t employed and I didn’t believe poker winnings were taxable, and that belief was genuinely held. That’s not fraud. That’s an honest mistake made by someone outside the legal and accounting world,” he submitted to the tribunal.

Mr Tran called famous Aussie world champion poker player Joe Hachem as a witness to give evidence for him, and Ms Lye called Hachem a strong and credible witness.

Mr Tran, who used to run Lonsdale Coffee Delight, told the tribunal he gave his unemployed wife $1.4 million to buy a house in Glen Waverley, Victoria outright on 15 August 2015.

One witness, Nhan Di Pho Vo told the tribunal he owed Mr Tran $811,478.

“I was again concerned that the witness’s evidence was unreliable,” Ms Lye ruled about Mr Vo.

Mr Tran told the tribunal his bankroll for gambling in 2012 would have been close to $1 million, $2.5 million in 2013, $3m to $4m in 2015, $4m to $5m in 2016 and over $5 million in 2017, figures Ms Lye concluded were implausible.

By 2018 Mr Tran was banned from the casinos, he told the tribunal.

Ms Lye was not impressed with Mr Tran’s testimony.

“Mr Tran himself was a difficult and evasive witness. His own evidence about the moneys which passed through his hands lacked corroboration, was inconsistent in many places with the evidence of other witnesses and was changeable.

“There were very few corroborating records to show account for the moneys which passed through his hands and his accounts. In particular, Mr Tran’s estimates of the size of his bankroll, his winnings and his other activities were not plausible, even on his own estimates of his bankroll and winnings.

“He failed to explain deposits into his account from the Family Trust and his estimates of amounts loaned to third parties was often inconsistent with the other party’s evidence. Some of his evidence such as the transfers between his account and his wife’s account were suspicious.

“The Commissioner by his analysis of the casino reports and bank accounts he obtained could only ever hope to estimate Mr Tran’s income,” the decision states.

The original assessment, which includes a 75 per cent penalty, stands

Originally published as High stakes gambler Ti Ke Tran – aka ‘Lucky Eddie’ or ‘Eddie the Blessed’ – faces multimillion-dollar tax bill