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For Ex-Lottery Winner Facing Prison, Life Is Good

Tribune photo by ANDY JONES

Richard Rosario and his girlfriend Rhoda Toth photographed in New Port Richey.

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By ELAINE SILVESTRINI | The Tampa Tribune

Published: April 28, 2008

TAMPA – Former lottery multimillionaire Rhoda Toth just lost her husband and is facing federal prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud.

She has no money and says doctors told her she doesn't have much longer to live, with a list of maladies including Multiple Sclerosis, carpal tunnel syndrome, nerve damage and a torn tendon.

Still, she says, her life is beautiful.

"I'm happy," she says. "I found love all over again that I haven't had in 16 years."

By the time the Alex and Rhoda Toth were arrested on tax charges in 2006, authorities said they appeared to have no assets. The $13 million Florida Lotto money won 18 years ago was long gone, and the Hudson couple was living in squalid conditions with no running water, their only electricity coming through an extension cord rigged to their car engine.

The Toths said they lost the money through gambling, gifts and living the high life. The money created rifts in their family, leading to a lawsuit between Rhoda Toth and her son in 1996.

Rhoda Toth, 51, now says her 25-year marriage to Alex Toth was miserable. Before he died, he cheated on her repeatedly, she says, and when she caught him with another woman last year, she left.
She says she met her new man at a gas station.

She was upset and was complaining on the telephone to a friend, when the woman behind the counter told her a guy outside in a limousine was waiting for her.

She didn't believe it, so the clerk bet her a soda.

She went outside and Richard Rosario was waiting. He asked her how she was and then told her he worked for a limousine company. He just moved to the area from Massachusetts and was looking for friends. He gave her his number and told her to call him sometime.

The day she caught her husband with another woman, she says, she looked Rosario up.

They ate breakfast together. He asked her out. "We talked," she says, "and I've been with him ever since."

She says he asked her to marry him and is willing to wait for her if she goes to prison.

Rosario, 43, says he loves Toth's personality. "She's a wonderful person, very giving," he says. He hopes the judge has sympathy for her because of all she's been through, but he will wait if she goes away. "I want to be there for her."

Alex Toth went to a federal medical facility last year after a judge declared him incompetent to stand trial. The last time she caught him cheating was just before he went away, she says.

Alex Toth's lawyer says that he had planned to take his case to trial and blame Rhoda Toth, that Alex just signed whatever papers Rhoda put in front of him.

This claim makes Rhoda Toth simmer. Alex, she says, didn't get sick until after the events mentioned in the tax charges.

According to Rhoda Toth's plea agreement filed in federal court, the Toths won the lottery to be paid out over 20 years. When the payments were being made, their taxes were withheld. In 1999, they sold the annuity to Singer Asset and Finance for two lump sums, $1.59 million to Alex Toth and $1.49 million to Rhoda Toth.

That year, they filed tax returns reporting their income as if they had received the same annuity payment they had received before. They failed to report the lump sum payments from selling the annuity, the plea agreement states.

In subsequent years, the agreement states, the Toths falsely reported gambling losses to offset the payments they were no longer receiving.

In total, the agreement states, Rhoda Toth owes the government $1.1 million and her husband owed $1.4 million.

"Alex was in charge of all the money, the banks, the attorneys, the accountants," Rhoda Toth says. They followed the advice of her husband's accountant, she says.

Richard Rosario took Rhoda Toth to the Sunset Lounge in Spring Hill, she says. At sunset he asked her to marry him. He gave her a white gold ring with three diamonds on either side, a half carat in all.

"It's beautiful," she says. "He says he want to get married before I go to jail, or if not, when I'm there."

Reporter Elaine Silvestrini can be reached at (813) 259-7837 or esilvestrini@tampatrib.com.

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