Ex-Jaguars employee to plead guilty after allegedly stealing millions from team, has 'serious gambling addiction'

The former Jacksonville Jaguars employee who allegedly stole more than $22 million from the team plans to plead guilty to a pair of federal charges, his attorney, Alex King, told The Athletic on Thursday.

Amit Patel, who worked for the Jaguars from 2018 until earlier this year, was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of illegal monetary transaction in federal court this week after he allegedly exploited the team's virtual credit card program to steal more than $22 million. Patel, King said on Thursday, has a "serious gambling addiction" and started stealing money from the team to subsidize gambling losses.

"It started with a little bit, and as these things usually do, spiraled wildly out of control," King told The Athletic.

Patel, King said, bet on football and daily fantasy sports repeatedly. He used his own name while placing bets “almost exclusively,” though it’s unclear if he bet on Jaguars games specifically. The NFL first contacted Patel in February and informed him that it was investigating his activity.

Patel worked as both a financial planning and analysis coordinator and manager with the Jaguars, where he oversaw the team's monthly financial statements and department budgets. He also reportedly oversaw the virtual credit card program. Starting in 2019, he allegedly made fraudulent transactions and hid them 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."

Patel allegedly then used that money to buy, among other things, two vehicles, a condominium, a designer watch worth more than $95,000, cryptocurrency and more. His attorney, though, insisted Thursday that Patel did not use the stolen funds to "live an extravagant lifestyle," but rather in a "horribly misguided effort to pay back previous gambling losses that utilized the Jaguars' VCC program."

"Almost the entirety of the funds Mr. Patel used from the VCC were spent on the gambling websites and efforts to win money back, with the anticipation he would repay the funds with the winnings and make the Jaguars whole," King said in a statement, via The Athletic. "Unfortunately, Mr. Patel's compulsive gambling only exacerbated the situation, and he continued to misappropriate funds in an effort to have gambling winnings offset his significant losses."

Patel checked himself into an inpatient rehabilitation center to deal with his gambling addiction earlier this year. He has “fully cooperated” with the Jaguars, the FBI and other officials and will continue to do so, King said. King also does not expect Patel to serve jail time.

The Jaguars confirmed on Wednesday that they fired Patel in February, and said he was working alone.

"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," the team said in a statement, in part. "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."