Dana Rieck
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)
ST. LOUIS — A judge on Tuesday sentenced a financial adviser convicted of a massive Ponzi scheme that victimized more than 60 people across the U.S., including NFL star Travis Kelce.
Siddharth Jawahar, 38, will serve 11 years in prison for defrauding investors of about $36 million, much of which he was also ordered to pay in restitution.
“I will not rest until every penny is paid back,” he told the judge during an hourslong, at times contentious, sentencing.
But Judge Zachary Bluestone said he was concerned that Jawahar had not yet paid any money toward restitution, despite him having some assets that could be liquidated.
“You are not as forthcoming about the assets as you said you are,” Bluestone said. “If you’re lying to me, you own that at the end.”
Jawahar was indicted in December 2023 on four counts of fraud after prosecutors say he spent years overstating profits and lying about how his company, Swiftarc Capital, was investing people’s money.
Jawahar took $35 million from clients but spent only $10 million on investments, prosecutors say.
Instead, Jawahar used the proceeds to repay other investors and to fund his lavish lifestyle. He did not stop soliciting money even after a Texas board ordered him to “cease and desist from engaging in fraud” in 2022, court documents say.
Swiftarc Capital was founded in 2013 and invested in an array of stocks and other interests. But its strategy shifted in 2015, and Jawahar began investing a majority of his clients’ money into Philip Morris Pakistan — a tobacco manufacturing company listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange.
A 2021 Forbes article reported that several professional athletes invested in Jawahar’s Swiftarc Ventures Labs Fund. Named investors included Kelce and NBA players Tim Hardaway Jr. and Mason Plumlee.
It’s unclear exactly how much money that Kelce lost, and if the other athletes were also victims in the Ponzi scheme.
The case was prosecuted in St. Louis because the victim to first report Jawahar lives here.
Jawahar’s company began rapidly losing money, and Jawahar did not tell his investors about the decline. Instead, he told them shares were trading at a much higher price, according to court documents.
When clients began asking for their money, Jawahar couldn’t pay the returns by selling off shares because he had inflated the price. Instead, he solicited investors for more money, court documents say.
His defense attorney, Doug Passon, said he didn’t agree with the 11-year sentence handed down Tuesday.
“It was more time than I think Sid should have gotten,” he told reporters. ” Sid Jawahar is a very good man who has done some very wrong things, very illegal things. He’s owned those things.”
Jawahar is from India and is here illegally, authorities have said. Once he serves his sentence, he will face deportation.
“What we’re dealing with in today’s case (is) one of the largest Ponzi schemes that was ever prosecuted in this district,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Derek Wiseman told reporters. “We had $36 million that he stole from victims across the country, and as I think the record made clear today: victims who put their trust in them, victims who were emotionally abused — I think that is the word the court used. So these people were truly victimized in every sense of the word, and I think it was a just sentence that was imposed.”
© 2026 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Visit www.stltoday.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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