JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A former worker who labored for the Jacksonville Jaguars has been accused of stealing greater than $22 million from the group.
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In court docket paperwork obtained by Motion Information Jax from the U.S. District Court docket in Jacksonville, Amit Patel was the supervisor of monetary planning and evaluation for the crew. His obligations included getting ready monetary statements, overseeing division budgets, and appearing because the administrator of varied packages, together with the enterprise’s digital bank card (VCC) program.
It was the digital bank card program that Patel is accused of exploiting for monetary achieve.
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The company VCC program was used equally to a bank card however with out the necessity to use a bodily card. In line with the paperwork, VCCs have been used for business-related purchases or bills.
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“As a part of the defendant’s scheme, fairly than precisely report his VCC transactions, the defendant (Patel) created integration recordsdata that contained quite a few false and fraudulent entries and emailed them to Enterprise A’s (Jaguars) accounting division,” the court docket paperwork learn. “He used quite a lot of strategies to cover his illicit transactions by omitting them from the mixing recordsdata, whereas nonetheless having the overall greenback quantity of VCC expenditures match the balances paid by Enterprise A for the VCC program line of credit score.”
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An instance was Patel duplicating fees used for reliable crew purchases resembling catering, airfare, and resort stays. He would then inflate the quantities of {dollars} spent on these transactions. It appeared like life like fees he was submitting however in truth, they by no means truly befell.
Among the private purchases Patel is accused of creating from the rip-off embody a condominium in Ponte Vedra Seaside, a Tesla Mannequin 3 sedan, a Nissan pickup truck, a Patek Philippe Nautilus watch value over $95K, and cryptocurrency. He additionally spent the stolen cash to lodge a retainer with a felony protection regulation agency, buy sports activities memorabilia, a rustic membership membership, live performance and sporting occasion tickets, place bets with on-line playing web sites, and personal jet charters.
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Whereas court docket paperwork don’t title the Jaguars and check with them as “Enterprise A”, the crew did affirm Patel’s alleged scheme.
“We will affirm that in February 2023, the crew terminated the employment of the person named within the submitting. Over the previous a number of months we’ve cooperated totally with the FBI and the U.S. Lawyer’s Workplace for the Center District of Florida throughout their investigation and thank them for his or her efforts on this case. As was made clear within the fees, this particular person was a former supervisor of monetary planning and evaluation who took benefit of his trusted place to covertly and deliberately commit important fraudulent monetary exercise on the crew’s expense for private profit. This particular person had no entry to confidential soccer technique, personnel or different soccer info. The crew engaged skilled regulation and accounting companies to conduct a complete impartial assessment, which concluded that no different crew staff have been concerned in or conscious of his felony exercise.”
— Jacksonville Jaguars
The US Lawyer’s Workplace charged Amit Patel with wire fraud and unlawful financial transaction.
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