Ex-Jaguars employee sues FanDuel for $250m

Former Jacksonville Jaguars employee Amit Patel has filed a lawsuit against FanDuel, seeking $250m in damages.

The plaintiff alleges that the company exploited his gambling addiction to generate profit, which was also one of the reasons why Patel stole from his former employer and spent the money indiscriminately, mostly on gambling.

Jaguars employee who stole $22m is suing FanDuel

Patel was sentenced to 6.5 years prison sentence in March this year, after he was found guilty of having embezzled the NFL franchise’s funds to fuel his gambling addiction.

He was fired from the Jaguars in April 2023 and diagnosed with a gambling disorder a month prior to his ousting from the team. He was caught by the FBI which led to an extensive investigation into him, assisted by the Jaguars, which exposed the embezzlement.

Patel spent more than $20m of the team’s funds on gambling with FanDuel between 2019 and 2023 and enjoyed a distinct status on the platform. He was contacted by a VIP account manager more than 100 times between 2021 and 2023, the defense explains, naming Brett Krause as the person responsible for handling these communications.

His legal team alleges that FanDuel must have been aware of his problematic behavior based on information about the plaintiff’s deposits size and frequency of betting.

However, shifting the blame onto the platform is not always an easy case to argue, and this is why Patel’s legal defense is not really interested in going after FanDuel because it allowed the man to gamble when he had a gambling addiction as the primary reason of the lawsuit.

Rather, the legal team alleges that the defendant targeted and preyed on Patel’s issue with gambling, by offering various incentives, gifts, and credits, to entice him to play further. This, the defense argues exacerbated Patel’s addiction and pushed him to "rock bottom."

FanDuel is accused of knowingly incentivizing a gambling addict

FanDuel is basically accused of incentivizing an addict to continue playing because they were spending large sums of money, which was ultimately beneficial to the company. The defense has also gone onto the offensive insisting that FanDuel had indeed failed in certain regards that are provable.

The complaint argues that Patel would not have cleared the necessary anti-money laundering verification processes, but that internal communication suggested FanDuel’s team "got around" that issue.

Although he spent a great deal on gambling, Patel was at least partially enjoying a lavish lifestyle which had not won him sympathies in court. He used a part of the embezzled funds to buy luxurious accommodation, purchase high-end vehicles, and book private jet flights.

His lawsuit, though, goes both after FanDuel and the parent company, Flutter Entertainment, but also further alleges that in some instances Patel was "set up" to lose in certain contests hosted by the operator. The defendants have not offered a comment.

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