The undocumented Indian immigrant behind a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme that defrauded Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce and other investors tried to marry an American citizen before he was sentenced this week to 11 years in prison, court records show.
Federal prosecutors opposed Siddharth Jawahar’s request to marry Caroline Tredway, saying he may be attempting “to obtain immigration status in the United States,” according to a Sept. 4 filing in the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of Missouri.
Jawahar’s lawyer, however, insisted his client was not engaging in “marriage fraud” and said Tredway was willing to buy a $25 wedding ring and spend another $75 on an “officiant” to perform the ceremony.
“The truth is, Mr. Jawahar very much hopes to stay here after his sentence and build a life with Caroline, and he plans to pursue any legal avenues to do so,” attorney Doug Passon stated in his Sunday response.
Passon also acknowledged both Jawahar and Tredway are aware that “given this case and his current immigration status, his ability to remain here is highly unlikely.”
The revelations came two days after the 38-year-old Indian national, who pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in January, was sentenced to prison and ordered to repay $31 million in restitution to victims he defrauded from 2016 to 2023.
It was during this proceeding at the U.S. District Court in St. Louis that a prosecutor briefly mentioned that Kelce was one of Jawahar’s many high-profile victims. Kelce has not addressed the report publicly.
NBC reached out to Tredway, who lives near Cleveland, to find out if she and Jawahar are still intending to marry. She has not responded.
“I don’t have any comment on that, and find it wholly irrelevant to the issues at hand,” Passon said in an emailed response to NBC News.
But in a June 30 phone call that was monitored by authorities, Jawahar and Tredway discussed the implications of them getting married, court records revealed.
“What if you get deported?” Tredway asked.
“If you don’t marry me, I guess that might happen,” Jawahar replied.
During that same conversation, the records showed, Jawahar also told Tredway that “the chance of me getting deported goes down dramatically” if they tied the knot.
Tredway, in an August letter to the court, said they met in 2021 and “officially became romantic” in February 2023.
“That night, Sid voiced his interest in me and asked me out on a date for the next evening,” she wrote. “That date turned out to be the best date of both of our lives. Because we already had such a strong foundation of trust and friendship, we fell deeply in love very quickly.”
Tredway, in her letter, insisted that “legitimizing our marriage before he enters a federal facility is vital for our family.”
“I enter into this marriage with my eyes completely open to Sid’s legal situation,” Tredway wrote.
In subsequent conversations with Tredway’s relatives, Jawahar also said he expected to be sentenced to “close to time served” and that he would then “focus on getting a pardon because there were a lot of gross violations of the law.”
“But my move after that is — I’d most likely be teaching a class in business ethics at Fordham University,” he was recorded as saying.
Marrying a U.S. citizen was apparently not the only gambit by Jawahar to avoid a lengthy prison sentence.
Jawahar in August, according to prosecutors, paid a prominent Missouri political consulting firm called Axiom $10,000 to try and sway the judge presiding over the case by getting U.S. Rep. Sam Graves, a Missouri Republican, to write a letter of support on his behalf.
Axiom also engineered the publication of a favorable article about Jawahar in a local newspaper that did not mention he was awaiting sentencing for a scheme that resulted in what U.S. District Judge Zachary Bluestone called “enormous losses” for investors.
Jawahar also tried to coach a victim to give a favorable statement to authorities and sought to have his sister wipe his iPhone, prosecutors said.
Much of Jawahar’s past remains murky, but records show that he arrived in the U.S. from India around the time he began studying at the University of Texas in fall 2005.
Jawahar was a government and philosophy major and took classes as recently as spring 2012 but did not graduate with a degree, a spokesperson at the school said.
The U.S. attorney’s office, however, says Jawahar ran a Texas-based investment company called Swiftarc Capital LLC and carried out a classic Ponzi scheme, using money from new investors to repay older investors and to fuel an extravagant lifestyle.
Jawahar traveled on private jets, stayed at luxury hotels, went on spending sprees and had memberships at private clubs across the U.S.
From July 2016 to December 2023, Jawahar’s company took in more than $35 million but invested roughly $10 million, the prosecutor’s office said.
In addition to Kelce, Jawahar was reportedly able to lure other top athletes to invest in his venture capital fund.
That group, according to a Forbes article published June 14, 2021, included NBA players Gary Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Mason Plumlee.
“I’m thankful for Sid bringing me in, taking me under his wing and believing in me,” Harris was quoted as saying of Jawahar.
NBC News reached out to their agents asking whether the NBA players lost any money as a result of their investing with Jawahar and whether they cooperated with the federal investigation. There was no response from their agents.
