Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback Trevor Lawrence went down with an ankle injury on Monday night. The team is eagerly awaiting his return. That’s in stark contrast to a former team employee, Amit Patel, to whom the Jags showed the door earlier this year.
The shocking details behind Patel’s release recently came to light.
Who Is Amit Patel and What Crimes Is He Accused of?
Amit Patel is a former Jaguars team employee and is accused of stealing a gargantuan $22 million sum over five years from 2019 to 2023. During his time with the team, Patel reportedly sported the title of financial planning and analysis manager.
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Patel’s listed duties, as per The Athletic, included reviewing the team’s monthly financial statements and department budgets, and he was an administrator for the team’s virtual credit card program. Evidently, this power over the team’s finances proved too tempting for Patel to resist taking advantage.
Patel’s alleged crimes were very white-collar in nature. The court filing claims that he hid transactions by identifying “reoccurring VCC transactions, such as catering, airfare, and hotel charges, and then duplicated those transactions; he inflated the amounts of legitimate reoccurring transactions; he entered completely fictitious transactions that might sound plausible but that never actually occurred.”
According to the same piece by The Athletic, Patel used the misappropriated funds to make several large purchases, including two vehicles, a condominium, and a designer watch worth over $95,000. He also brazenly used that money to acquire cryptocurrency and to place wagers on online gambling sites.
The Jaguars unsurprisingly cut ties with Patel when they became privy to his suspected crimes in February of this year. The team recently released a statement confirming they’d been the victim of an internal, financial crime.
“We can confirm that in February 2023, the team terminated the employment of the individual named in the filing,” the Jaguars said in a statement. “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.
“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.”
If the cited figure of $22 million is accurate, then Patel got to live like one of the NFL stars whose finances he helped to oversee for the better part of a half-decade. However, the Jaguars’ organization would clarify that he did not impact the team strategically.
“This individual had no access to confidential football strategy, personnel, or other football information. 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.”
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