Xaviar Michael Babudar, the disgraced Kansas City Chiefs superfan known as “ChiefsAholic,” will be sentenced in federal court on Thursday for a series of bank robberies.
The penalty will be determined on the same day the Kansas City Chiefs open their season with a home game against the Baltimore Ravens at Arrowhead Stadium.
As part of a plea agreement, Babudar, 30, pleaded guilty in February to three counts related to a series of robberies or attempted robberies of nearly a dozen banks and credit unions in seven states in 2022 and 2023.
According to court documents, the charges include money laundering, smuggling stolen goods across state lines and bank robbery.
The plea included two federal cases, a one-count indictment from the Northern District of Oklahoma and a 19-count indictment in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri. As part of the plea agreement, Babudar agreed that the Oklahoma case would be handled in federal court in Kansas City.
Babudar’s attorney, Matthew T. Merryman, is asking that his client be sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. Prosecutors are asking for a 20-year sentence.
Prosecutors also are asking Babudar to pay $532,455 in restitution and forfeit an autographed painting of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes recovered by the FBI, as agreed in a plea agreement.
Babudar allegedly traveled to various locations and committed a series of robberies at banks and credit unions. In the days surrounding some of the robberies, Babudar attended several Chiefs away games. He then returned home to the Kansas City area and allegedly laundered the stolen money through area casinos and deposited the proceeds into his bank accounts, court documents said.
Escaping from a troubled childhood
As a child, Babudar was an avid Chiefs fan. The soccer team and its games provided him with an escape from his troubled childhood, Merryman wrote in the sentencing memorandum.
When Babudar was 8 years old, his father abandoned his family, leading to more than 20 years of chronic homelessness, financial hardship and family trauma for Babudar, his mother and his brother, Merryman wrote.
“It was during this transition into homelessness that Xaviar began to see himself as the support system for his family and he saw himself as the one who would provide for his family no matter the sacrifice,” the court document states.
Starting in 2013, the “shy and introverted man” created the persona that would evolve into the ChiefsAholic — a football fanatic wearing a wolf mask — and over the years he used that persona to express himself, the court document said.
His attendance at Chiefs games grew from a few games a year to attending every game from 2018 to 2021. He was often spotted by camera crews at games. His popularity on social media grew at the same time, according to the court document.
Babudar began betting on sports and made frequent trips to riverboat casinos, where he developed a gambling addiction, Merryman said in the court document. Babudar posted about his gambling success on social media, and he pooled in winnings to buy his mother and brother a house.
“Eventually, Xaviar’s luck ran out and the gambling addiction became uncontrollable,” Merryman wrote. Babudar’s debts soon exceeded his winnings.
Too broke to provide for his family and too ashamed to face his fans, Babudar traded in his superfan uniform for ski goggles, work gloves and an air pistol. These items became his trademarks during a series of bank robberies in the Midwest, Merryman wrote.
The money he stole ended up in casinos in the Kansas City area.
A 10-year sentence “is both justified and more than sufficient to achieve the goals of the sentence,” Merryman said. Also, because of Babudar’s “quasi-celebrity status,” he said, he is able to potentially repay losses and provide restitution to those affected by the robberies.
‘Bullet in your head’
“Despite his many public guises, the true nature of Xaviar Michael Babudar has been revealed following his robberies and attempted robberies of 11 banks and credit unions in eight states, stealing $847,725 over a 16-month period,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum.
In all but a few of the robberies, Babudar brandished what appeared to be a firearm, the document said. While some of the money he stole was recovered, most was not.
“Babudar’s rampage allowed him to purchase expensive tickets to Kansas City Chiefs games and grow a large online following as ‘ChiefsAholic,’ a carbon copy of the Chiefs’ official mascot, KC Wolf,” prosecutors said.
While on a crime spree, Babudar touted his work ethic and promoted himself as a role model on social media.
“After graduating from KSU in 2016, I worked in a warehouse making $12 an hour… Today I manage multiple warehouses in the Midwest making excellent money and I’m only 28 years old,” Babudar posted in a now-deleted tweet on X, formerly Twitter. “Hard work pays off and DON’T let ANYONE tell you otherwise.”
The sentencing memorandum provides a timeline of several robberies and attempted robberies by Babudar, including photos of him in his disguise and climbing over cash registers. The document describes surveillance footage of one of the robberies that showed Babudar with his finger on the trigger of a gun as he pointed it at an employee’s arms.
The document also contains statements from victims who were at work at the time of the robberies.
Babudar allegedly threatened his victims, including telling one of them, “If you don’t open it, I’ll blow your brains out.” He also allegedly told employees at a robbery that if they gave him a paint kit, he would come back and “put a bullet in your head.”
“You didn’t just steal money,” an unidentified credit union employee wrote in a victim impact statement. “You took more than paper and ink — you stole my safety, my job, my world that day. I feared for my life because you wanted to have fun.”
The victim continued: “I remember the gun you stuck in my side, the nasty words you said when you took me to the vault. I saw you hurt my coworkers and scare us to death.”
One victim described how Babudar robbed many of the same employees at one location twice, months apart. The second time, the bank had a different name.
“It was heartbreaking to see my teller’s reactions when they saw him coming and could do nothing to stop him…he took them straight to the vault and held a gun to each of their chests…” the unidentified victim wrote. “My teller had that gun print on her chest for over an hour and had bruises for several days afterward.”
Another victim said that more than just money was stolen in one of the robberies.
“The credit union was a warm and welcoming place where many of the same people came every week,” the victim wrote. “We knew them; we knew what was going on in their lives. It was like a big social support network, not just a credit union… All those relationships are gone now.”
Long sentence justified
In his plea agreement, Babudar admitted to committing robberies or attempted robberies in Clive, Iowa; Bixby, Oklahoma; Omaha, Nebraska; West Des Moines, Iowa; Nashville, Tennessee; Savage, Minnesota; Apple Valley, Minnesota; Papillion, Nebraska; Sparks, Nevada and Eldorado Hills, California.
The sentencing memorandum noted that Babudar was originally arrested shortly after the December 2022 Oklahoma robbery. He was released on bail in February 2023. A few days later, the Chiefs won the Super Bowl and Babudar won $100,000 on two bets he placed during his June 2022 robbery spree.
Days after receiving his winnings, Babudar removed his ankle monitor and fled. In the months that followed, he robbed two more banks before being arrested in California on July 7, 2023, four days after his most recent robbery, the memorandum said.
Prosecutors argue that Babudar’s multi-state robbery warrants a lengthy sentence, noting that even after he was caught, he escaped state custody and “quickly resumed robbing banks.” They allege that virtually all of his robberies involved some form of violence, whether it involved physically attacking an employee, brandishing what appeared to be a weapon, or both.
He then aggravated those crimes by laundering the proceeds through Kansas City casinos, investigators said.
“The wolf and the ski masks he wore were attempts to hide his true nature from the world, because underneath each of them is Xaviar Babudar, a man who has violently robbed, or attempted to rob, more than a dozen banks,” prosecutors said in their brief. “That violent bank robber is the one who will be convicted, and his extensive, violent crimes warrant a lengthy prison sentence.”
