JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Former Jacksonville Jaguars financial planning and analysis manager Amit Patel is facing 30 years in prison after pleading guilty to felony charges of wire fraud and making an illegal financial transaction.
In federal court Thursday, Patel admitted to making hundreds of fraudulent transactions using his employers’ virtual credit card program from fall of 2019 to February of 2023, spending more than $22 million of the embezzled money on gambling, jet rides, luxury vacations, a country club membership, a country club membership, cryptocurrency, watches, and more.
He also admitted to forging hundreds of expenses in Excel spreadsheets he submitted to the accounting department every month from the fall of 2019 to February 2023.
After the allegations against Patel became public, News4JAX turned to University of North Florida business school professors Mark Dawkins and Leah Muriel for analysis on how these missing millions could have been overlooked.
“A couple things that stood out to me,” said Muriel, who is an assistant professor of accounting and finance at UNF. “Of course, there’s certainly a lot more information than whatever is put in this document, but just seeing that this person, Mr. Patel, had such authority and could create the documentation...it seemed like he was approving everything, but there wasn’t much monitoring that I could tell from this document. It said he was like, the sole approver of these credit card expenses.”
Professor Dawkins said someone should have been checking receipts.
“They should have had oversight for the expenses,” Dawkins said.
The plea agreement reveals in November of last year, Patel made $5.6 million worth of fraudulent transactions, and because it nearly exceeded the credit limit, he just got the bank to increase the limit to $7.25 million.
According to Patel’s attorney, his client gambled away most of the money. He said Patel has a serious gambling addiction for which he’s been in treatment, and he apologizes for his conduct.
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Two sources told the News4JAX I-TEAM that the Jaguars weren’t aware of the missing money until online gambling company Fan Duel reached out.
News4JAX asked the professors if it is possible the Jaguars organization may have just overlooked the missing millions because it deals with large sums of money.
“We would say for you and me, yes, $22 million is material. Again, I’m not sure how much the Jaguars operation spends on an annual basis, and so I can’t really say whether $22 million is material to the Jaguars. I would assume it is,” Dawkins said. “One of the things that they could have done is, they could have been doing a trend analysis on their major categories of expenses. Not to say that the [virtual credit card] transactions would have been considered a major category, but it would have fallen in some other bucket of expenses if it wasn’t on its own. A major category and a trend analysis should have picked up on a large increase from year to year when this started, and so they may have been able to catch it sooner. And that’s not to say they didn’t do a trend analysis, but it went on for four years, which leads me to question whether they were doing a trend analysis on their expenses.”
Patel has agreed to pay back the $22 million. He is currently out on bond.
Last week, a spokesperson for the Jaguars said Patel did not have access to confidential football information and an investigation from outside firms found no other employees were involved in this criminal activity.
When reached for comment Friday, a spokesperson for the Jags referred News4JAX to its previous statements, including the following statement released Monday: “As noted previously and as described in the charges against him, this individual 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 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. With the assistance of external experts, it has extensively reviewed its own policies and procedures, added staff to its finance department, and taken other measures to ensure the integrity of its financial controls.”