Jaguars Employee Who Stole $22 Million Sues FanDuel For Exploiting His Gambling Addiction, Which He Argues Made Him Steal The $22 Million

Don't think this is going to end well for Amit Patel. Probably the best advice in sports betting or gambling of any kind is to quit while you're ahead. In other words, don't chase your losses. If you take a big "L" on a bet, don't immediately try to win it all back. Well. Patel is attempting to do that and then some, filing a lawsuit against FanDuel for exploiting his gambling addiction, which led to him committing wire fraud and money laundering to the tune of over $22 million while he was an employee of the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jags have enough bad press amid a 0-4 start to the season. Patel was already sentenced to more than six years in prison in March. Alas, this scandal isn't going away — and Patel is seeking a whopping $250 million in damages from FanDuel. The gist of it all, as reported by Jacksonville.com, is that a VIP FanDuel host frequently accompanied Patel to events and had to know that, given the NFL's crackdown on suspending players for mild betting activity, Patel was prohibited from betting. Per the lawsuit, FanDuel enabled Patel's addiction stems from alleged offers Patel received when his betting slowed down. These included invitations to the Super Bowl, the college football national championship and the Formula 1 race in Miami to encourage him to wager more. Although we can acknowledge that a sports betting attorney would be compelled to side with the big sportsbook, I think this take by expert Daniel Wallach does a good job to capture the odds Patel is up against: https://twitter.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/1841457008387535031 https://twitter.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/1841461143094562852 Patel could have as strong of an argument as he wants. From what little I grasp of all this legalese, I'm not sure how betting over $22 million doesn't qualify as "outrageous conduct to support an emotional distress claim." The guy was bugging out, constantly throwing down more money when he knew he was way in the hole, and kept losing. If you've ever been on a bad betting streak, no matter how small the units you're betting might be, you still get a downer feeling and a pit in your stomach, wondering where else you could've better placed these valuable funds. Now imagine you're in so deep that you can't see the forest for the trees and you're literally blowing your life up because of a gambling addiction. Sports betting is so new and is exploding everywhere. Any judge would have so little incentive to go against a big player like FanDuel and established legal precedent in the name of somebody who stole so much money and is doing long, hard time for it. Tough scene all around. What a wild win it'd be for Patel, though, if he somehow wrenched away $250 million or anything close to those damages he's seeking. He could emerge from incarceration a gazillionaire. Not holding my breath on that outcome, though.