Of all the ways one might run afoul of the Internal Revenue Service, you have to admit, creating a shadow empire controlling the tee times of Southern California’s public golf courses is a particularly novel one.
It’s a story that has everything: identical twins, the quiet, contemplative sport of golf, and the kind of aggressive capitalism that would make a Gilded Age railroad baron blush.
Our protagonists are Se Youn “Steve” Kim and Hee Youn “Ted” Kim, 41-year-old twin brothers who, by day, worked as MRI technicians—a perfectly respectable, if not wildly exciting, profession. But by morning, they were the undisputed kings of the fairway, in a wild golf tax evasion scheme.
A Monopoly on Morning Mist
According to federal prosecutors, the Kim brothers operated what can only be described as a tee-time black market. Between 2021 and 2023, a period when the pandemic made an open-air activity like golf more popular than ever, they allegedly cornered the market on reservations.
Imagine the scene: ordinary folks, honest citizens just wanting to hit a bucket of balls at sunrise, would log on to a municipal course’s website the second tee times were released, only to find them all gone. Vanished. Snatched up in an instant.
The culprits? The Kims, allegedly, armed with multiple devices and a network of “unspecified friends,” securing the most desirable slots before anyone else could even type in their credit card number. They’d then resell these times to desperate golfers via messaging apps like KakaoTalk for a tidy profit.
They weren’t just booking a few slots; they were booking thousands, creating a veritable monopoly across at least 17 different courses. It was brilliant, in a diabolical sort of way.
From Green Fees to Gucci
The money, as it tends to do in these situations, rolled in. The brothers allegedly raked in nearly $700,000 from their golf hustle alone. This, combined with their MRI income, led to a grand total of more than $1.1 million in income that the IRS claims they conveniently forgot to mention on their tax returns.
Now, forgetting to report a million dollars is the kind of oversight the IRS tends to notice.
Especially when, instead of paying your outstanding tax balance, you’re allegedly spending those funds on a timeshare in Hawaii, luxury cars, and making the rounds at Chanel, Cartier, Louis Vuitton, and Prada. It’s a bold strategy, treating your tax bill like a suggestion while treating the local luxury mall like a professional obligation.
Just Helping the Elderly, You Understand
When interviewed by the L.A. Times last year, before the federal indictment came down, Ted Kim framed his business not as a scheme, but as a public service.
He claimed he wasn’t a tech-savvy predator but a noble helper of elderly Korean golfers who struggled with the online booking systems. “Without my help, they actually struggle,” he said, presumably with a straight face.
He was, in his telling, a hero. A man of the people, for a small fee.
Alas, the U.S. Attorney’s Office saw it a little differently. The brothers have pleaded not guilty to a host of charges, including tax evasion and willful failure to pay tax.
It just goes to show that whether your side hustle is dog walking or becoming the secret overlord of public golf, the IRS expects its cut. And they have a funny way of finding out when they’ve been left off the scorecard.
