Interviews

James TheStradman owed the IRS about $1 million after audit

He told Graham Stephan that fishy money also moves through collector car auctions.

James TheStradman said an IRS audit found he owed about $1 million in back taxes. He traced the bill to years of leasing supercars and deducting channel expenses on The Iced Coffee Hour.

Graham Stephan brought the automotive YouTuber back to walk through the June fire that wrecked his first Lamborghini Gallardo and the tax fight that followed. TheStradman said he turned a $600 video camera into a $10 million channel, but the audit and insurance fight on the Gallardo left him in a dark place he hid until he had to turn it on for the camera.

On the Gallardo, he said he smelled fuel minutes before the rear of the car ignited near his Utah home. He said he had no fire extinguisher in the cabin and that strangers with extinguishers kept the blaze from finishing the car. Dexerto reported that bystanders rushed in before crews arrived, and Supercar Blondie later wrote that insurers declared the Gallardo a total loss before he bought it back to rebuild.

He told Stephan he paid $2.7 million for one supercar and that he recently priced a collection worth almost $4 million. Stephan asked what he had seen in the collector market, and TheStradman said more money was sloshing through auctions than ever and that insiders know some of it is fake. He said fishy bidding happens at major sales, including Barrett-Jackson and Bring a Trailer, and called the run-up a bubble.

TheStradman said auditors also fined him more than $500,000 while questioning how a YouTuber could justify leased exotics as business expenses. He said marriage was coming soon and that he and Sophia were already planning for Strad kids once the Gallardo rebuild and the tax bill were behind them.

Source video: TheStradman Breaks Silence on Burned Lamborghini, $1M IRS Audit, & Car Market Bubble