Travis Kelce named victim in multi-million dollar ponzi scheme

American football star Travis Kelce has reportedly been named in court as a victim of a Ponzi scheme that collected more than $35 million from investors while its operator spent lavishly on private jets, luxury hotels and other personal expenses.

Siddharth Jawahar, 38, who ran Texas-based investment firm Swiftarc Capital LLC, was sentenced to 11 years in federal prison on Tuesday, September 15, and ordered to pay $31.35 million in restitution.

Local news outlets KMOV and WENG reported that prosecutors briefly identified Kelce, a Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs player, as one of the victims. They did not disclose how much he lost or provide further details of his involvement.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri did not name Kelce in its statement announcing the sentence.

A 2021 Forbes article had separately identified Kelce as an investor in the Swiftarc Venture Labs Fund, created by the firm Jawahar co-founded.
Jawahar pleaded guilty in January to three counts of wire fraud.

Prosecutors said he collected more than $35 million from investors in Missouri and elsewhere between July 2016 and December 2023, but invested only about $10 million.

He used new investors’ money to repay earlier investors and finance what prosecutors described as an “extravagant lifestyle”.

His spending included private jet travel, luxury hotels, apartments in Austin and New York City, memberships of private clubs, clothing and expensive restaurant outings.

According to prosecutors, Jawahar began putting clients’ money into Philip Morris Pakistan in 2015, eventually concentrating 99 per cent of the funds in the company’s stock.

When the stock’s value fell, he concealed the losses and falsely told investors they were making profits.

He also claimed to have invested some clients’ money in specific companies when he had not done so.

After his indictment, Jawahar tried to coach a victim into giving a favourable statement to the FBI and sought his sister’s help to remotely wipe his iPhone to conceal evidence, prosecutors said.

They also accused him of lying about his immigration status.

U.S. District Judge Zachary M. Bluestone highlighted the scale of the losses and the duration of the fraud when imposing the sentence.

The judge echoed a victim’s statement that Jawahar had “weaponized” investors’ trust and noted that he had not begun repaying them.