Siddharth Jawahar, a 38-year-old illegal immigrant from India, was sentenced this week to 11 years in prison for running a $35 million investment wire fraud scheme through his company, Swiftarc Capital LLC. The scheme’s victims included Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and several NBA players.
At sentencing, Judge Zachary Bluestone said Jawahar “weaponized” the trust of his investors, leading to “massive” losses. Jawahar has been ordered to pay $31.35 million in restitution.
Between 2016 and 2023, Jawahar raised more than $35 million from investors but put only about $10 million of it to work as promised. The rest funded a lifestyle of private jet charters, upscale apartments in Austin and New York, high-end dining, shopping sprees and exclusive private club memberships.
Rather than building a diversified portfolio for his clients, Jawahar sank roughly 99% of investor capital into a single stock, Philip Morris Pakistan. When that position collapsed, he concealed the losses with falsified statements and used money from new investors to pay off earlier ones — the classic structure of a Ponzi scheme. He controlled 17 additional entities used to carry out the fraud.
According to the Department of Justice and a court document reviewed by Fox News Digital, Jawahar has been living in the United States illegally since 2005 and now faces the possibility of deportation on top of his prison sentence.
The DOJ also said Jawahar tried to obstruct the investigation after his 2023 indictment on three counts of wire fraud and one count of investment-adviser fraud. Prosecutors say he coached a victim to give the FBI a favorable statement while lying about his own immigration status and finances, and that he asked his sister to remotely wipe his iPhone to destroy evidence.
Jawahar pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in January 2026.
His victims, who the DOJ says resided in Missouri and other states, included Kelce — who recently married pop star Taylor Swift — along with NBA players Gary Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Mason Plumlee.
Colin McDonald, an assistant attorney in the DOJ’s National Fraud Enforcement Division, marked the sentencing in a post on X, calling Jawahar an “illegal alien fraudster” and praising the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri for its work on the case.
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