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It’s been close to three years since the Jaguars discovered a team employee had managed to embezzle funds from the team to the tune of over $22 million. The vast majority of that sum was used to gamble on FanDuel, and the franchise has managed to get the sportsbook to agree to return some of the pilfered funds.
Most multibillion-dollar businesses have some safeguards in place to ensure a single person isn’t able to spend years siphoning a massive amount of cash from their coffers without anyone realizing something is amiss.
However, the Jacksonville Jaguars failed to take the proper precautions after an employee named Amit Patel was tasked with overseeing the virtual credit card payments that were used to cover a variety of operating expenses starting in 2019.
He was apparently the only person charged with monitoring those transactions and sending reports to the franchise’s accounting department, and in 2023, someone there finally realized something was amiss before he was arrested and charged with stealing more than $22 million.
FanDuel ended up being a major beneficiary of that ruse, and the Jaguars will be getting some compensation that still doesn’t come close to covering the money Patel managed to lose while using the platform to gamble away an impressive amount of money.
The Jaguars will get $5 million from FanDuel after the sportsbook took $20 million worth of bets funded by money an employee stole from the team
As you can probably assume, Patel used his ill-gotten gains to splurge on purchases including a Patek Philippe watch, chartered flights on a private jet, and a putter that was given to Tiger Woods after he won the U.S. Amateur Championship for the third time in a row (the last of which set him back close to $50,000).
However, he also had a crippling gambling problem that led to FanDuel making out like a bandit after he managed to lose $20 million while wagering with the sportsbook.
Patel, who is serving a six-and-a-half-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to theft, sued the sportsbook for $250 million last year while asserting it had “intentionally targeted and preyed” on his addiction—a lawsuit that was filed after the Jaguars took him to court in a civil case that seeks more than $66 million in damages.
The team also tried to get FanDuel to cough up the funds that Patel obviously had no right to wager in the first place, although the company had not really been willing to budge when it came to parting with them.
However, ESPN reports the two sides came to an agreement toward the start of 2025 that will result in FanDuel forking over $5 million to put the matter to rest. The outlet notes the NFL (which counts the company among its Official Sports Betting Partners) “did not actively participate” in the negotiations but strongly encouraged them to figure something out, with a source saying FanDuel felt pressured to do so in order to please the powers that be.
If you’re curious, FanDuel reported $5.8 billion in revenue and a net profit of $162 million in 2024.