HOT: Amit Patel used the stolen $22M money to buy two cars, a condominium and to buy designer watch worth over $95K

A former #Jaguars employee, Amit Patel, is alleged to have stolen over $𝟮𝟮 𝗠𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗜𝗢𝗡 from the team over the past 5 years by exploiting the organization’s virtual credit card program.

He used the stolen money to buy two cars, a condominium and a designer watch worth over $95,000. Some of that money was also reportedly used to purchase cryptocurrency and place bets with online gambling sites. 

Patel was charged with one count of wire fraud and one count of illegal monetary transactions, and could be responsible for repaying $22,221,454.40, which “represents the proceeds of the offense,” according to the filing.

According to court records and a statement released by the team, the Indian-origin employee used his position as manager of financial planning and analysis to manipulate the team’s virtual credit card programme.

“Over the past several months we have cooperated fully with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida during their investigation and thank them for their efforts in this case,” the statement read in part. “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 virtual credit card (VCC) programme is intended for Jaguars employees to make legitimate business purchases. Instead, Patel used it to commit wire fraud and embezzle $22 million from the team’s coffers.

According to The New York Post, he manually tinkered with the system by using “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.”