US: Native American Ex-Manager of a Football Team Charged with Stealing $22 Million to Purchase a Condo, Crypto, and Cars
Federal prosecutors filed criminal paperwork on Tuesday alleging that a former financial manager of a well-known American football club, of Indian descent, amassed over $22 million in credit card debt from the business in order to finance an extravagant lifestyle.
Documents filed in US District Court in Jacksonville accuse Amit Patel, who began working for the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2018, with one count of wire fraud and one count of illicit monetary transaction. Patel worked for the team for five years. As the team’s only virtual credit card (VCC) administrator, Patel took use of his position to disguise personal purchases as corporate expenditures.
TESLA, NISSAN AND PONTE
Patel is accused of using the money to buy a Tesla Model 3 sedan, a Nissan pickup truck, a condominium in Ponte Vedra Beach, a Patek Philippe Nautilus watch for USD 95,000, and cryptocurrency, CBS News reported. The Jaguars are identified in court records as only “Business A” but confirmed in a statement that they were impacted by the alleged crimes of Patel, who was fired in February.
According to King, Patel “suffers from a serious gambling addiction” and approximately 99 percent of the misappropriated funds from the Jaguars’ virtual credit card programme were gambling losses. “Mr Patel did not use the Jaguars’ VCC to fund his lifestyle, but in a horribly misguided effort to pay back previous gambling losses that utilised the Jaguars’ VCC programme,” King said. Patel’s authority over the VCC program allowed him to make the fraudulent transactions, the filing said. He allegedly duplicated and inflated transactions for items such as catering, airfare and hotel charges and filed fake transactions that seemed legit.
“Over the past several months we have cooperated fully with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida during their investigation and thank them for their efforts in this case,” the team said in a statement “As was made clear in the charges, this individual was a former manager of financial planning and analysis who took advantage of his trusted position to covertly and intentionally commit significant fraudulent financial activity at the team’s expense for personal benefit. This individual had no access to confidential football strategy, personnel or other football information, it said.
The team engaged experienced law and accounting firms to conduct a comprehensive independent review, which concluded that no other team employees were involved in or aware of his criminal activity. Patel’s attorney, Alex King, said that his client intends to plead guilty to the charges and ”is deeply remorseful and apologises for his conduct”, USA Today newspaper reported.
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