The Jacksonville Jaguars’ financial coordinator, planning, and analysis is accused of stealing over $22 million from the franchise.
In court documents filed in the U.S. District Court in Florida earlier this week, Amit Patel is accused of abusing the team’s virtual credit card program.
The Virtual Credit Card (VCC) program is an online dashboard that allows staff members and coaches to input transactions for business-related expenses like; airfare, food, board, etc.
Instead, Patel created fraudulent transactions that never happened. According to the court documents, he discovered the “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.”
He is accused of using the $22 million he stole to purchase, a condominium, travel for him and his friends, chartering private jets and booking luxury hotels, a Tesla Model 3 sedan, and a Nissan pickup truck. He also lodged a retainer with a criminal defense law firm among many other expenses.
Patel, who was head of finances and the sole proprietor over the VCC program, was employed with the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2018 until his termination in February of this year.
I wonder how long this went on before he got caught and why weren’t there periodic audits done to ensure the books were balanced and transactions accounted for?