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Ex-Jaguars worker who stole $22M from team sues FanDuel
A former financial manager for the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars who stole $22 million from the team is suing FanDuel for $250 million, saying the betting company preyed on his gambling addiction.
Amit Patel, who is serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence in South Carolina, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in New York claiming that FanDuel ignored its own responsible gambling and anti-money laundering protocols, knew Patel was an employee of the NFL team and therefore not eligible to gamble legally, and knew that the $20 million he wagered on years of daily fantasy sports contests was either stolen or not from a legitimate source.
FanDuel declined comment, citing the pending litigation.
The lawsuit claimed FanDuel gave Patel over $1.1 million in gambling credits, and besieged him with enticements to gamble more, including having his personal host contact him up to 100 times a day.
“The complaint certainly does not claim the addicted gambler is blameless, but the suit does try to apportion responsibility in a way that accounts for FanDuel’s very active involvement in his gambling addiction,” said Patel’s lawyer, Matthew Litt.
The lawsuit says that on several occasions when Patel had not yet placed a bet that day, his host called him to ask why not. These communications started early in the morning and went late into the night, the lawsuit asserts.
It says New York-based FanDuel lavished gifts on Patel, including trips to the Super Bowl, the Masters golf tournament, auto racing and college basketball tournaments.
Patel pleaded guilty in December to wire fraud and other charges, and he agreed to repay the money he stole from the team.
His lawsuit closely resembles other legal actions brought in recent years by compulsive gamblers who blamed casinos or online gambling companies of preying on their addictions.
In September 2008, a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by a former New York attorney who claimed seven casinos had a legal duty to stop her from gambling when they knew she was addicted to it.
And in February, a lawsuit brought by the same attorney who is representing Patel in the current one against FanDuel was dismissed after claiming Atlantic City casinos had a legal duty to cut off compulsive gamblers.
Similar lawsuits have been dismissed in other states.
U.S. job openings rise to 8 million as labor market remains sturdy
WASHINGTON | U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in August as the American labor market continued to show resilience.
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8 million vacancies in August, up from 7.7 million in July. Economists had expected openings to be virtually unchanged. Openings were up in construction and in state and local government.
Layoffs fell in August. But the number of Americans quitting their jobs — a sign of confidence in their job prospects — slid to the lowest level since August 2020 when the economy was reeling from COVID-19 lockdowns.
Job openings have come down steadily since peaking at 12.2 million in March 2022, but they remain above where they stood before the coronavirus pandemic hit the American economy in early 2020. When the economy roared back with unexpected strength from COVID-19 lockdowns, companies scrambled to find enough workers to keep up with customer orders.
The overheating economy caused an outburst of inflation, and the Federal Reserve responded by raising its benchmark interest rate 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Inflation has come down — from a peak of 9.1% in June 2022 to 2.5% in August.
The economy proved surprisingly resilient in the face of the Fed hikes, averting a widely forecast recession. But the job market has gradually lost momentum. Hiring averaged just 116,000 net new jobs a month from June through August — the weakest three-month average since mid-2020.
When the Labor Department releases its jobs report for September on Friday, it is expected to show that employers added 143,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate remained at a low 4.2%, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet.
The Fed, satisfied with the progress against inflation and worried about the cooling job market, last month cut its benchmark rate by a hefty half percentage point, the central bank’s first and biggest rate cut since March 2020.
“Job openings had a big gain, and while these numbers are volatile, it’s likely employers see falling interest rates spurring the economy and may want to staff up,’’ said Robert Frick, economist with the Navy Federal Credit Union.
Sony’s PlayStation Network suffers hourslong outage
LONDON | Sony’s PlayStation Network went down for hours on Tuesday, frustrating gamers around the world who complained they weren’t able to sign in to their accounts.
PlayStation Network said on its website that “some services are experiencing issues,” and that players “might have difficulty” logging in, creating accounts, launching games or getting video content.
“We are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible,” it said. Sony did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
Data from Downdetector, an outage tracker, showed that reports first spiked late Monday and continued into early Tuesday with thousands of reports submitted hours after the problem first emerged.
The outage was resolved by morning in the U.S. and the Playstation Network website was updated with a message that said, “All services are up and running.”
—From AP reports
