Crazy Like a Jaguars Employee Who Stole $22 Million to Bet on FanDuel?

This is the first of two posts this week on subjects that I learned of though the Money Stuff Podcast. In the Men’s Haircuts Episode, Matt Levine and Katie Greifeld discuss the case of Amit Patel, who stole $22 million from his employer to bet on FanDuel. It’s bad to steal from your employer. It’s worse to steal from your employer to feed your gambling addiction. It’s worse still if your employer is a sports team, in this case the Jacksonville Jaguars. Oh, and this is the best: he used his corporate credit card to place bets on FanDuel. But wait there’s more! Now, Mr. Patel is suing Fan Duel for $250 million. Do we have a new definition of chutzpah?  But all of that is what makes this situation so irresistibly blogworthy. Here is the complaint. He’s got some serious claims.

For those of you who don’t want to listen to the podcast, Amos Morales III has the story in The New York Times’ The Athletic. Mr. Patel alleges that he was an addicted gambler from 2019 to 2023. He was diagnosed with a severe gambling disorder in 2023 and has not placed a bet since then. Given that he was sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison in March 2024, one assumes that his opportunities to gamble are more limited now. He alleges that FanDuel knew of his addiction and yet used its VIP status program to entice him to gamble over $20 million during that time. According to the complaint, FanDuel engaged in a predatory gambling practice by “intentionally ignoring its own responsible gaming protocol,” knowingly avoiding knowledge of the illegal sources of the money that Mr. Patel used to gamble,  and circumventing “its own Know Your Customer (KYC), anti-money laundering (AML), and customer due diligence (CDD) standards and requirements.”

The factual allegations are pretty jaw-dropping. Mr. Patel and a FanDuel employee would exchange up to 100 texts daily, and on days when Mr. Patel did not gamble, the employee would reach out to him to find out why. According to the complaint, FanDuel’s enticements to get Mr. Patel to continue gambling were not subtle. They extended over $1 million in credit, they sent him to a Grand Prix event in Miami, to an NCAA championship football game, and to two PGA Masters Tournaments. The thirty-two page complaint provides much more detail.

Although Mr. Patel is making no contractual claims, contracts defenses lurk interestingly in the shadows. He cannot unwind the transactions based on illegality. Doing so would not help him recover his losses. However, he is claiming that his relationship with Fan Duel was illegal and that, because of that illegality, FanDuel violated certain statutory obligations, was negligent, and inflicted emotional distress on Mr. Patel. He also is claiming a form of volitional incapacity due to his gambling addition. I’m not offering legal advice, of course, but it seems to me that he would have an argument for restitution based on an incapacity defense to his obligation to pay his gambling debts to FanDuel. Perhaps that ship has sailed.

Rather than making those arguments, Mr. Patel contends that FanDuel may not legally take money from illegal sources. Because he was gambling with his corporate credit card (did I mention that the corporation he works for is a sports team and he was begging on sports?), Fan Duel should have known that he was engaged in illegality and should have cut off his VIP gambling account.  Instead, they enticed him to continue gambling in violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Practices Act. The same conduct gives rise to claims for negligence, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and conspiracy to commit a tort. Mr. Patel seeks $250 million in damages and not just the recovery of the $22 million he was enticed to gamble away. 

I don’t know if he’ll ever see any of that $250 million, but he does have some serious arguments to which FanDuel will have to respond. The case is proceeding, and we will look for updates if anything crosses our path. Don’t bet on it.