Fame, fortune, and a private security detail are supposed to buy protection from crime. In a country with loose borders and catch-and-release, however, they do not. In the past two years, some of the richest athletes in America have been robbed, burgled, and fleeced by people who had no legal right to be in the United States.
Federal prosecutors recently named Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce among the victims of a $35 million Ponzi scheme run by Siddharth Jawahar, a 38-year-old Indian national the Justice Department describes as an illegal alien living in the United States since 2005. Jawahar pleaded guilty to wire fraud and was sentenced to 11 years in prison and more than $31 million in restitution. Through his firm Swiftarc Capital, Jawahar collected more than $35 million from investors between 2016 and 2023, invested only about $10 million, hid losses on a concentrated bet in Philip Morris Pakistan, and spent the rest on private jets, luxury hotels, club memberships, and apartments in Austin and New York. Other NBA players were publicly tied to the same fund.
Then there are the strong-arm robberies. On Dec. 9, 2024, while star quarterback Joe Burrow and his Cincinnati Bengals were playing in Dallas, thieves broke into Burrow’s home and stole about $300,000 in jewelry, watches, designer luggage, and the quarterback’s diamond “JB9” and “#9” chains. Court filings later showed suspects posing with the loot.
Federal authorities charged three Chilean nationals, describing them as members of a South American “Theft Group” — one of many highly organized transnational criminal networks who enter the U.S. on visas or illegally to commit high-end residential and commercial burglaries. Police said the men were in the country illegally or had overstayed their visas. Even though Burrow had a security detail, prosecutors said the crew waited for a shift change and approached from the woods.
The same networks did not stop at one house. In October 2024, the Kansas City-area homes of Patrick Mahomes and Kelce were burglarized while the Chiefs were occupied with games. Federal complaints also tied Chilean suspects to break-ins at homes associated with Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Mike Conley Jr., a Tampa Bay Buccaneers player, and other NBA and NFL athletes.
Prosecutors said the crew stole more than $2 million in valuables by studying public game schedules, renting cars, using fake IDs, and moving merchandise across state lines. The U.S. attorney’s office said all seven Chilean nationals charged were in the country illegally. NBC News later reported that some had entered under the U.S.–Chile
Visa Waiver Program, which allows a 90-day stay without a visa, and then remained after that clock ran out.
The victims had plenty of assets to protect themselves from such crime. Kelce’s estimated net worth is about $90 million, with more than $111 million already earned in NFL salary and tens of millions more from endorsements and media. Burrow’s 2023 extension averaged $55 million a year and is worth $275 million. Mahomes makes over $50 million per year in salary and is on a contract worth more than $500 million. They can hire lawyers, wealth managers, security cameras, and guards. They were victimized anyway.
If athletes at that altitude can be victimized, so can everyone else. ICE’s non-detained docket, reported in 2024, included hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions, among them more than 10,000 robbery convictions. Numerous reports have cited the murderous Latin American gang Tren de Aragua setting up crime syndicates in New York City, Colorado and elsewhere involved in extortion, smuggling, sex trafficking, drugs, and gun violence.
The athlete’s cases reveal a vetting and enforcement failure. Chile’s visa-waiver status lets travelers skip consular interviews. Overstay enforcement has long been an afterthought. Meanwhile, southwest border encounters surged to historic levels during the Biden administration, and interior removals of visa overstays and criminal noncitizens lagged the scale of the problem. Despite aggressive enforcement by the Trump White House, many foreign criminal elements remain.
“But Americans commit crimes, too!” is an oft-cited and tiresome refrain from anti-borders activists. That might be true, but it misses the point. The United States will always have home-grown criminals to track down. The question is, why are we compounding the problem by importing foreign—and arguably more violent and ruthless—criminals out of a warped sense of guilt and suicidal empathy?
Some of the wealthiest among us were unable to avoid becoming victims of illegal alien crime. We as Americans collectively have the ability to avoid it; we just have to demand full immigration enforcement, secure borders and the closure of immigration loopholes—no exceptions or half measures. When the will of the people is strong, the elected leaders will have no choice but comply or look for another line of work.
Brian Lonergan is director of strategic communications and content at the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington, D.C., and co-host of the “No Border, No Country” Podcast.