Former Jacksonville Jaguars employee Amit Patel is facing new felony charges that could put him in state prison for allegedly using team money to fly himself and friends to outings on private jets, a court record shows.
Patel, who was sentenced to federal prison for stealing $22 million spent mostly on gambling and posh living, was booked into the Duval County jail July 8 on six new state-level grand theft charges.
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An affidavit from a State Attorney’s Office investigator shows two examples of that high living could count as separate felonies each worth up to 15 years behind bars.
The affidavit said Patel spent $35,900 for a private jet to fly him and a few friends to Kansas City for a Jan. 21, 2023, playoff game the Jaguars lost to the Chiefs.
Federal prosecutors filed these photos of Amit Patel on a 2022 trip to Miami for a Formula 1 race before he was sentenced to prison for stealing about $22 million from the Jacksonville Jaguars, his former employer.
AMIT PATEL: Feds detail ex-Jaguars employee’s spending on ‘life of luxury’
The next weekend, Patel and his friends flew to South Florida for the Pegasus World Cup, a premiere horse racing event. That trip cost $42,900, and both excursions were paid for from a PayPal account where Patel had stashed money from the Jaguars’ Virtual Credit Card (VCC) program, the affidavit said.
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Patel was the team’s sole VCC administrator after 2019, the affidavit said.
“The expenditures Patel made were purely personal. They were not authorized by the Jaguars, nor permissible expenditures through the VCC program,” State Attorney’s Office investigator John Zipperer wrote in the affidavit, written to get a warrant to arrest Patel.
The warrant charged Patel with two counts of second-degree grand theft (punishable by up to 15 years in prison) and four third-degree counts (up to five years).
Former Jacksonville Jaguars employee leaves federal court in this December 2023 photo after pleading guilty to defrauding the team of about $22 million.
Grand theft is a second-degree felony when it involves theft between $20,000 and $100,000, making the plane trips the apparent basis for those charges.
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The affidavit also points out four times between August 2022 and October 2022 when it said payments of $2,475 each were moved from Patel’s PayPal account to his VyStar Credit Union account. Restating that Patel had moved money from the team’s VCC program to his PayPal account, the affidavit said after each VyStar transfer that “this was not an authorized expenditure.” Thefts between $750 and $20,000 are considered third-degree felonies.
Patel, now 32, pleaded guilty to federal charges of wire fraud and illegal monetary transactions in December 2023 and was serving a 6½-year sentence. The affidavit said Patel was at Federal Prison Camp Montgomery at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama before being brought back to Jacksonville for the new charges.
Before facing federal charges, federal court documents said Patel transferred $20 million to his FanDuel account and $1 million more to DraftKings for gambling purposes. His attorney for that case, Alex King, said in 2023 that Patel “suffers from a serious gambling addiction” and that 99% of the money he stole was lost gambling.
In the new case, Patel asked for a public defender, saying he was indigent, court records showed.
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The Jaguars also sued Patel last July for $66.7 million in damages, according to Duval County records, citing a Florida law that states theft victims are entitled to claim triple the amount stolen. The case is still open.
Patel sued FanDuel last fall for $250 million in compensatory and punitive damages, claiming the sports betting company “actively and intentionally targeted and preyed on (him) with incentives, credits, and gifts to create, nurture, expedite, and/or exacerbate his addiction.”
Records show that Patel’s next court date is July 30 in Duval County.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Ex-Jags employee Amit Patel charged anew over plane trips, money moves
