Ex-Jaguars employee accused of embezzling $22 million from team pleads guilty
Amit Patel, the former Jaguars employee accused of embezzling more than $22 million from the team, pleaded guilty today.
Patel pleaded guilty to felony charges of wire fraud and illegal monetary transactions in federal court today, according to ESPN. He is out on bond and will be sentenced at a later date.
Patel oversaw the Jaguars' virtual credit card program for three years and is accused of a series of fraudulent transactions that netted him $22,221,454.40 before the Jaguars fired him in February. Patel's attorney claims that 99 percent of the money Patel took was to feed an addiction to sports gambling. But prosecutors say Patel made purchases including a condominium, a Tesla, cryptocurrency, luxury hotel stays and luxury wristwatches.
The NFL and the Jaguars both say Patel did not have any kind of inside information that he could have used for the purposes of gambling. Still, ESPN reports that Patel was also a gambler who engaged in many high-stakes bets on the NFL. And it's a bad look for the league and the team that a team employee was stealing from a team and using that money at least in part to bet on NFL games. The league and the 32 teams need to take this case seriously, as employees engaged in gambling have the potential to use information they acquire at work and threaten the integrity of the game in the process.
