In December 2023, Colorado safety Shilo Sanders reported having assets totaling nearly $325,000 in a bankruptcy case stemming from an $11.89 million judgment against him.
This judgment relates back to a 2015 incident during Sanders’ high school years, where he was accused of assaulting a security guard, John Darjean. The court, in 2022, ruled in favor of Darjean, awarding him the multimillion-dollar judgment after finding Sanders committed assault and battery. Sanders did not appear at the trial.
The assault allegedly left Darjean with severe and permanent injuries, including a broken neck and irreversible neurological damage, as detailed in a lawsuit initially filed in Dallas District Court in 2016 and reiterated in 2024 bankruptcy filings. Darjean claims these injuries resulted from Sanders hitting him during the altercation.
Additionally, the bankruptcy filings have brought to light concerns regarding Sanders’ potential underreporting of his assets, specifically his Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) earnings. Accusations have surfaced suggesting that Sanders may be channeling these earnings through entities like Big 21 LLC and SS21 LLC, potentially obscuring the full scope of his financial resources.
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Court documents from the bankruptcy case suggest that Sanders has not adequately disclosed his NIL-related earnings.
According to the filings, “Shilo chose not only to hide the value of the entire NIL endeavor with the ‘unknown’ listings for two of the entities that were disclosed, but he also intentionally failed to identify and disclose his individual NIL property interest anywhere in the schedules.”
Sanders has gained significant attention through various endorsement deals with major brands such as Google, Starz, and Oikos, partly due to his high profile as the son of Colorado head coach Deion Sanders and as a prominent figure in a college football program that has recently risen in visibility.
The majority of Sanders’ reported asset value is tied up in his Mercedes-Benz and investments in a Robinhood account. Notably, his total declared assets decreased from $477,881 reported in October 2023, attributed to poor investment performance towards the end of the year.
