US dream to Ponzi net, how Delhi man duped Taylor Swift’s husband, many others

In 2005, a 21-year-old man from Delhi left home to study at the University of Texas. A couple of years later, he started an investment firm that attracted prominent figures, such as popular NFL player Travis Kelce, as clients. He also became a well-respected philanthropist, earning a place on the board of the Andy Roddick Foundation. Sidharth Jawahar or Sid, as he was known, had everything going for him, and his journey was a dream come true for an Indian immigrant in the United States.

Then, everything came crashing down.

Last Tuesday, a US district judge sentenced this “illegal immigrant from India” to 11 years in prison for running a Ponzi scam that cheated investors of millions of dollars.

The US Department of Justice said that Siddharth Jawahar, 38, raised more than $35 million from investors, but invested only 28 per cent. Among his 64 victims was NFL star Travis Kelce, who married singer-songwriter Taylor Swift this July. ‘Sid’, who pleaded guilty to three counts of wire fraud in January, has been ordered to pay $31.35 million in restitution.

Siddharth’s journey is a story of unbridled ambition that took a criminal turn.

A Delhi beginning

Seventeen years before the US court verdict, Siddharth was a young man from Delhi with an American dream. In his earlier accounts of his life, he described his parents as philanthropists and his elder sister as a tennis player.

In a conversation with IBTimes, he spoke about watching his sister experience discrimination and colourism in tennis. He linked those experiences to his interest in beauty and inclusion, and this led him to start ‘Beauty Fund’ – one of many funds involved in the multi-million-dollar fraud.

In the fall of 2005, a 21-year-old Siddharth moved to the US and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Professionally, he started working in the finance sector before switching to venture capitalism.

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In an earlier interview with California Business Journal, he spoke about his childhood in India and his parents taking him and his sister to camps set up for polio immunisation. He said that the memory of those camps prompted him to “give back to humanity”. “I credit my parents for giving me the gift of charitability. That gift has carried through my adult life in which I have been lucky to be involved with the Just Living Foundation, Andy Roddick Foundation, American Heart Association, The Kindness Campaign, Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation, CureHD (Huntington’s Disease) and the American Telehealth Association to name a few,” he said.

These associations bolstered his image as a philanthropist and could have contributed to help him scale up his business and attract celebrity clients.

How investors were lured, trapped

According to the court release, Siddharth ran a Texas-based investment company called Swiftarc Capital LLC. He founded this company in late 2010 along with Frank Krasovec and Zohar Ziv. In 2013, it was registered as an investment adviser with the Securities Commissioner.

The same year, the company invested in food, beverage and retail securities, with no more than 12 per cent of the Fund’s capital invested in a single security.

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In 2015, Siddharth started investing client’s money into Philip Morris Pakistan, a publicly listed company in Pakistan, the country’s second-largest tobacco company and an affiliate of Philip Morris International. By 2019, prosecutors say, about 99 per cent of client funds were concentrated in the stock.

The concentration became a problem as the stock declined. Texas regulators found Swiftarc Capital and Siddharth had overvalued the ‘illiquid position’ from September 2019 onwards.

By 2022, Swiftarc was no longer a single fund. The records identify a growing collection of entities, including Swiftarc Ventures, Swiftarc Venture Labs Fund, Swiftarc Telehealth Labs Fund, Swiftarc Beauty Fund and their associated general partners and special-purpose vehicles.

In the civil proceedings brought alongside the criminal case, prosecutors alleged that Swiftarc Ventures and its executives solicited investments through the formal machinery of private funds — confidential private-placement memorandum, subscription agreements and limited partnership agreements.

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According to the US Department of Justice, Siddharth raised more than $35 million from investors between July 2016 and December 2023, but invested only about $10 million. Prosecutors said he used money from new investors to repay earlier investors and spent substantial amounts on private jet flights, luxury hotels, apartments in Austin and New York, private-club memberships, clothing and expensive outings. Over 64 of his victims are known.

“In 2015, he began investing client funds in Philip Morris Pakistan (PMP). Eventually, 99% of client funds were consolidated into PMP,” the court release said. It added that when the value of PMP declined, Siddharth did not tell investors and falsely claimed that they were making profits. “Investors were also falsely led to believe that he’d invested their money in a specific company or companies but he never made the promised investments,” the court release said.

Seen with the who’s who

On June 28, 2018, Siddharth posted a photo with former US President Bill Clinton on X, then called Twitter. The caption read: “charm is inescapable”. He also posted photographs with American TV host Michael Strahan and actor Kevin Hart. The accounts suggested a persona comfortable straddling different worlds.

Some of the athletes who appeared in photographs with Siddharth would eventually become names on the list of victims of his fraud. Among them are Kelce, and NBA players Gary Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr. and Mason Plumlee.

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He also served for four years on the board of the Andy Roddick Foundation. By April 2018, he was appearing at the foundation’s events alongside the tennis player. The foundation raises money for programmes aimed at young people.

Attempts to derail conspiracy

The prosecution said that after his indictment, Siddharth tried to obstruct the investigation in several ways. One involved the sister who had featured in his earlier account.

Prosecutors said Jawahar asked her to remotely wipe his iPhone in an attempt to hide evidence. They also said he lied about his immigration status and finances. By then, he had already spent 20 years in the US.

The government also said Siddharth attempted to influence a victim’s account of what had happened. According to prosecutors, he tried to coach the victim before the person spoke to the FBI and sought a favourable statement. The allegation formed part of the government’s case that Siddharth had attempted to derail the investigation.

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While awaiting sentencing, Siddharth paid Axiom Strategies $10,000 for favourable publicity, according to a contract obtained by prosecutors and filed with the court.

A recorded jail call between Siddharth and Axiom founder Jeff Roe became part of the government’s account.

A few days later, Missouri Congressman Sam Graves submitted a letter to the judge asking for a 48-month sentence for Siddharth.

Graves said he was writing in his personal capacity. His connection to the episode could be through Roe: Roe had previously served as Graves’ chief of staff, and Graves’ campaign paid Axiom about $1.77 million since 2006, according to campaign-finance records cited by First Alert 4. No public evidence establishes that Graves knew about or participated in Siddharth’s fraud.