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A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee who managed to steal more than $22 million from the team is currently serving a prison sentence set to expire near the end of the decade, but his legal woes have grown now that the franchise has filed a massive lawsuit seeking three times the amount he managed to pilfer.
You might think most businesses—especially an NFL franchise—would have some sort of system in place that would prevent them from ending up in a situation where a single employee was able to embezzle tens of millions of dollars in less than the span of a year.
However, that was not the case with the Jacksonville Jaguars, who found themselves at the center of a pretty wild story in 2023 courtesy of Amit Patel, who was tasked with overseeing virtual credit card payments linked to the operation of the franchise beginning in 2019 and subsequently pilfered over $22 million ($20 million of which he stole in an eight-month span) before the team realized something was amiss.
Approximately $21 million of that total was used to fund Patel’s gambling addiction (FanDuel has rebuffed Jacksonville’s attempts to reclaim the $20 million he poured into the platform), but he also used it to fund a lavish lifestyle involving trips on private jets, a Patek Philippe watch, and the purchase of a putter that formerly belonged to Tiger Woods.
Patel pled guilty to the charges against him at the end of 2023, and in March, he was sentenced to six-and-a-half years in prison while being ordered to repay the money he stole.
However, ESPN reports the Jaguars are angling for much, much more after filing a civil lawsuit seeking $66.6 million in damages from Patel over “fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of fiduciary duty and civil theft” thanks to a Florida law that allows victims to attempt to reclaim three times the value of any damages they incurred.
It’s very hard to imagine Patel will ever come close to being able to repay the final amount, and it appears the lawsuit is primarily a mechanism to make it easier for the Jaguars to reclaim at least some of those funds as opposed to relying on the government to mediate the process.
Patel is currently scheduled to be released from FCI Williamsburg in South Carolina on November 23, 2029.