Kansas City Chiefs superfan “ChiefsAholic” was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison by a federal judge on Thursday for a string of 11 armed bank robberies or attempted robberies across seven states, in which nearly $850,000 was stolen.
On the same day that the Chiefs kicked off their 2024–25 NFL season, Xaviar Michael Babudar, 30, was sentenced in the Western District of Missouri and Northern District of Oklahoma to 17 years and six months in federal prison without parole.
Before Babudar’s official sentencing, he pleaded guilty on Feb. 28 to one count of money laundering, one count of transporting stolen property across state lines, and one count of bank robbery across state lines.
He will serve his sentences concurrently and was also ordered to pay $532,675 in restitution “to the victim financial institutions,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Western District of Missouri. The attorney’s office said much of the stolen money was laundered through local casinos and online gambling.
“The bank was not the only victim of these crimes,” said Special Agent in Charge Stephen Cyrus of the FBI’s Kansas City Field Office. “Babudar terrorized bank employees throughout his multi-state crime spree, while relishing his celebrity status. Today’s sentencing speaks to the severity of his actions.”
The statement reports that not all of the stolen money has been recovered and that Babudar is required to forfeit anything he owned that was involved in his money laundering activities, including an autographed painting of Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes that the FBI recovered.
Before his arrest, Babudar built up a social media presence on the X platform with his tag @ChiefsAholic. He was widely known for his passionate support of the Chiefs and for attending games dressed in a wolf costume wearing Chiefs shirts and other merchandise. Prosecutors say Babudar used some of the stolen money to pay for tickets to Chiefs games.
“Babudar’s robbery spree bankrolled the expensive tickets and travel across the country to attend Kansas City Chiefs games while he cultivated a large fan base online. However, the bank and credit union employees whom he terrorized at gunpoint suffered the brunt of his true nature,” U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore said.
Babudar confessed to the court that he had committed, or attempted to commit, nine robberies of banks and credit unions on top of the two he pleaded guilty to, according to the attorney’s office. The crimes were carried out in Iowa, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Tennessee, Minnesota, Nevada, and California in 2022 and 2023.
“The actions of Babudar were brazen and traumatic for the bank employees robbed in Bixby, Oklahoma,” said U.S. Attorney Clint Johnson of the Northern District of Oklahoma.
Babudar was arrested for the first time in 2022 in Bixby, where he was caught carrying a bag containing $150,250 in cash. Authorities searched his car and discovered betting slips for $24,000 and CommunityAmerica Credit Union letters detailing deposits of $20,000 and $50,000 into his account earlier that year.
Ahead of the 2022–23 NFL season, Babudar placed two winning bets in June 2022 at the Argosy Casino in Alton, Illinois. He placed a $ 5,000 bet that the Chiefs would win Super Bowl LVII, which gave him a $55,000 payout. He also placed a $5,000 bet on Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’s winning the Most Valuable Player award at the game, for which Babudar would take home $45,000.
After the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, he received a $100,000 check from the casino, which he used to buy a vehicle in Nevada in an attempt to avoid authorities, according to prosecutors. He was later arrested in Sacramento, California, on July 7, 2023, and has been held in federal custody without bond since then.
“He tried to flee from justice, but law enforcement caught up with him and now he will spend a significant portion of his life in prison,” Moore said.