Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
How are you doing tonight, Aaron? I'm doing quite well, Justin. How is your day going? It's all right. Doing good. Any announcements?
Yeah. So I say one of the recent maroons that I put out another podcast I work on, if you're not familiar, it's really interesting because I interviewed a guy who was part of the story and it's really cool. It came together because his daughter wrote in and said, Hey, you know, you're covering all these catastrophes and disasters and everything else on marooned. You should cover the story. My dad was part of.
And he was part of a horrible disaster that happened with the Coast Guard back in the late 70s. And wow, he had one hell of a story. So I'm really excited about this episode of Marooned. It's Marooned 36, the Coast Guard disaster. So I'd definitely check it out. And if you do listen toward the end, you'll get to hear from Peter Idint himself. So if you're in the military, you're into stories of survival, you'll want to check it out.
And I just did a guest spot on the Blue Murder Club. We talk about conspiracies and how they come about over the years. It was a fun conversation. So check out the Blue Murder Club podcast. So Aaron, we live in Kansas City.
Yes, we do. And whenever we say that to somebody, especially now, it's, are you a Chiefs fan? Or they just assume we are Chiefs fans and we watch every game and we follow it. Or they assume that we know that there's this quad billion Drupal platinum singer dating one of the Chiefs players. Yeah.
And it's so much in the news that yes, I am familiar with the Chiefs. I am familiar with Taylor Swift. But it's funny because the Kansas City Chiefs are a religion here. I know there's other teams like the Green Bay Packers or whatever that have hardcore followings. I've been to those cities before.
You don't have shrines on corners dedicated to your football teams the way we do here. I remember growing up, the Chiefs hadn't won a Super Bowl since 1970. I think, yeah, the Chiefs had been to several Super Bowls. They were in the first one and the fourth one. The first one, they were playing against the Green Bay Packers.
Yeah.
four times in like the last four years. Yeah. So I don't know, I guess you could say some people see it as a religion. I just think this is something that's common in all of sports, which is if you have a hometown team, especially when they're doing this well, it just unites everybody. So this is the first year and I've only done it twice now, but this is the first year I've actually gone and watched games because I
I have my brother who lives pretty close to me and he always says, Hey, you know, you should come over and watch the game. And I usually say, well, I'm not the biggest football fan. If you want to get together and watch a hockey game, I'm there. But, um, you know, I've been going over there because I don't get to see my brother as often as I'd like. And, um,
I ended up having a good time hanging out with him and his family. So that's something I'll be doing again. I'll be watching the Super Bowl. By the time this comes out, I'll either be on that day or close to it. So yeah, I'll be watching. And I think another thing you could say is because they're doing so well, it's great for the city. It's just, it also brings a lot of hate. And we know that it doesn't matter what industry you're in, whether it's music or sports, once you've won enough,
according to the people who aren't your fans, they're done with you. And there are definitely people out there right now who are done with the Chiefs because they feel like they've won enough. They've had enough time at the top. And now they feel like the only reason they're there is because of a conspiracy or who knows what their idea is. But, you know, I just look and I'm thinking, wow, these guys know when to turn it on. I mean, I watched a recent game where they were playing the bills and they
At the critical time in the fourth quarter, the Chiefs started blitzing Josh Allen and it really made a difference. He wasn't able to set up his passes and stuff like he was before. They started shutting them down and they did it at the right time. The Chiefs aren't like the teams from the 90s, like the 49ers and the Cowboys. They would just steamroll people, the other team. Now the Chiefs are winning by a few points or a touchdown or something and
I would say all in all, it's a good thing for Kansas City. Maybe not so much if you're not in Kansas City because you're starting to get annoyed by all the wins. But hey, that's the way it goes, right? And the Chiefs crowd, the fans are known for being the loudest. They're super quiet when the Chiefs are making a play. But when the opposing team is making a play, they erupt and
into the most loud, high decibel, just chaos you can ever hear to the point where the quarterback and whomever is on the field, they can't hear each other talking. And it actually disrupts their plays sometimes. That's how loud they get. They're known for that. And of course, they're known for their rabid fans, right? Yeah, their fandom. It gets pretty crazy. But again, it's good for the city. Now,
This kind of brings us to a story to share on this podcast, because typically we're covering mysteries or murders, and yet we'll be covering crime today, just a different kind of crime. I will say that this case, Aaron, sort of reminds me of D.B. Cooper. You know, we have a robbery, we have a crime that's happening, and...
A lot of people think D.B. Cooper is a legend, and a lot of people just think he's a criminal who hijacked a plane. So with that, what are we talking about tonight? Well, tonight we're talking about Chief Sahalik, a.k.a. Xavier Michael Babadar. I had no idea this was a thing, by the way. When you suggested this case to me, I was like, what?
I was like, Chiefsaholic? You said there's a documentary. Just go watch it. Again, this is how out of the loop I am with sports. Sorry. Blasphemy, I guess. Well, it's not for everyone. But what struck me about this is this guy was out there. He wanted people to know who he was in a way, like his persona anyway. And so people would see this, I guess, mascot appearing at games both in and outside of Kansas City.
This person apparently was showing up to from 2022 on showing up to games that the chiefs were participating in, whether they were at home or away. And so, you know, this person would post on, I guess it's X or what have you. And people were tweeting with him. They got into them. They, they really saw him as a component of the actual team. I think, you know? Yeah.
Yeah, he was very active in the quote-unquote scene, very passionate to the point where if you're a Chiefs fan, I think he was like, rah, rah, we're all together in this. But if you weren't a Chiefs fan, he was an online troll. He was horribly aggressive and hostile towards other people.
fans, other opposing teams, teams, fans, whatever. Chiefs have huge tailgating parties where their stadium is. It's right by Raytown on Blue Ridge Cutoff. I used to live a couple miles down. And these tailgating parties, you have thousands of people grilling and drinking and everything in the parking lot. And then their trash would literally blow all the way down, miles down Blue Ridge Cutoff to my front porch. And
And he would be there at every single one of these. And he would wear this huge wolf costume with a chief's ball cap, whatever, and a chief's jersey. And it was a full, I would call it a furry costume just because it's like a full-on wolf costume. It covers his entire body. Yeah, it was kind of cartoon-like, but-
You know, you're talking about the dark side of fandom. I think a lot of fans can, they can kind of get aggressive a bit here and there, but the end of the game, you can kind of hug it out or say, well, that was a good game. You guys got lucky this time or whatever. There's a last dig there, but you
Some of this fandom gets really dark and there are tons of videos out there on TikTok or Instagram, what have you, where people are coming up with reasons why the Chiefs have won. Some of them flattering and some of them very conspiratorial.
And on top of that, just to build on the dark side of it, I mean, I see videos of fans fighting each other in the stands, in the parking lot. Fans dying because they're wearing the wrong jersey. And-
On top of that, you have these stadiums that are over-serving alcohol. You know, you have all this craziness going on. That's what I see. That's why I'm like, I don't know if I ever want to go to a game because that doesn't look like the scene I want to be part of. I don't want to be around a bunch of drunk people and people that are wanting to fight me because I'm wearing the wrong color, like a gang or something. Well, if you go to a game, you'll be wearing black. It's just a, it's just a guess.
Well, then they'd think I'm a Raiders fan and I'd definitely get beat up. So Xavier was known as Chiefsaholic and anybody that saw him probably figured he had some money because to travel and see every game, be it every game throughout the season and then the playoffs and everything else, you got to have some money.
And most people don't have that capability. So let's talk about who Xavier was before we get into the crimes. Yeah. So when he was 10 years old, his father walked out on the family, leaving Xavier's mother, Carla, to fend for herself.
And he and his older brother Noah were without a father. He's coming from a broken home. And as we know, this is going to set anyone back a little bit in life. Without the support, the family was very nomadic. They were living and sleeping in their car, often moved from one parking lot to another. It was just...
they didn't have a stable upbringing or he didn't have a stable upbringing, but they just lived around the Kansas city area without an address. They were Catholic. They went to church. Xavier went to the gym every day, worked out. He did so for years. And, you know, when you're kind of living out of a car, you're sort of destitute. People will go to gyms because that's where you can take a shower. That's where you can clean up and, you know,
You know, it's sad to think about all the things you have to do to make it in life when you don't have a home. And Xavier was very much an online presence. And because he made a lot of posts, people could figure out how he saw himself because he shared a lot. He described himself as being loyal, dedicated and loving. One of the things he would say was faith, sports, people and money were important to him.
And he was also known to sports fans and followers online because of Chiefsaholic. That was the character he became. That was a super fan. And it worked. He's showing up to these Kansas City Chiefs games, both home and away, dressed in this gray wolf suit. And he's tweeting from his ex-account, Chiefsaholic. People just started getting attached to him. Well, at least the Kansas City fans anyway. Yeah.
And, um, eventually, you know, people were asking, like, I wonder what he does for a living. How is he able to fund this lifestyle of being at all these games? And, uh, and as you said, he would wear chiefs merchandise over the wolf suit, you know, jerseys, uh, vests, or he'd wear hats, uh,
And he even had some Chiefs pajama pants. And he'd wear these cool wraparound sunglasses. He was perpetually or whatever, habitually online. So he had over 4,000 followers. He was very active and just tweeting and posting all the time. And he'd post weird gifs and memes and talk a lot of crap on other platforms.
teams. He'd post videos of himself outside the stadium before each game and hyping up other fans. Yeah, the pictures with the fans, those really stood out to me. He'd get in with a group of people and they'd all be screaming and yeah, they loved it. But being that I've never been to a Chiefs game, I had to go look up ticket prices, Aaron. They're not cheap. Parking isn't cheap at the stadiums. To go to every game
You're spending, oh man, over $10,000 easy. And that's just for the ticket prices and stuff. Unless you have a company that gives you free tickets or anything like that, you're spending over 10 grand to go to every single game. And those are just the home games. So he also did giveaways to his followers and he would select people at random to win Chiefs related prizes, sometimes free tickets to games. Yeah.
Not only was he going to the home games, he's going to away games. So you're talking about travel costs, but then he's giving away prizes and that's thousands of dollars. So people are wondering like, how does he afford all of this? Because well, they, they, they can't figure it out because as much as he's out there and he's posting all the time and he's in all these pictures and videos, he's
People don't really know who he is under the mask. And not only this, but he apparently tweeted a lot about going to casinos and that he was a gambler. So he would post pictures of betting slips, especially when he won. He's just got the money. So casinos, of course, are,
are a part of his life. And you always hear about when somebody wins at a casino, you don't hear about the 99.9% of the time when they lose at a casino. Well, they stay in business, don't they? The casinos. And he did a lot of sports betting, specifically football is where he'd places large bets. And I don't know if you ever bet against the chiefs or not, but he was the biggest fan. So therefore he would win.
win big money on Chiefs games. Yeah, I don't really still understand all the betting on sports. Like, I don't know how it works. I think people bet on all aspects of it. Like,
Like there's something called the spread and how much one team is expected to win by how many points under over, et cetera. And people make money that way, but I've, I've honestly never done it. So I don't, I don't really know how it works, but I'm sure there are a number of people listening right now that say, Oh, I do this or I have a fantasy football team, et cetera. So as we said, he's appearing at all these games. And at some point he even took a selfie with Kansas city's general manager after they won the super bowl and,
He went to a Mahomes charity gala and on at least one occasion purchased a painting, which people know costed thousands of dollars. So he's never taken the suit off. You know, he never took like the head off at a game or anything, but he did publish pictures of his actual face on his ex account. And in one picture, he's seen standing in the stadium of a Kansas state football game with his mother.
So people got to look at him and they would describe him as being broad and muscular. He was six foot tall and about 250 pounds. Big guy. Now they, everyone that's known him as chiefs, a holic, uh, they never knew his real name, what he looked like or anything. Now they at least have a face.
So there's a woman named Lindsay True, and she was an online friend of Chief Sahalik, and she appeared on an ESPN documentary. She resided in Arizona and had chatted with him online. In the fall of 2022, Chief Sahalik DMed True to ask if they could meet up after the game. And this game was to be in Arizona. And it was then that she realized that she had never known his real name and asked him, what's your name? And he said, I'm not sure.
And he responded, Xavier. So they did meet up and she said he was nice and respectful. They mostly talked about the chiefs.
And it's obvious because he didn't tell her anything about his personal life, only that he did have some relatives in LA and that he had a brother and a mother. And the following month in October of 2022, they met up again. And the Chiefs had just won a game against San Francisco and he was driving home. On the way, he asked True if she wanted to meet up and they went to watch a basketball game, the Phoenix Suns.
And afterwards, he invited her to go gambling with him at the nearby casino like he does. But she declined because it's late in the night. And I don't know, maybe she wasn't exactly looking for a long night with him. She just wanted to hang out because he's kind of online famous. Yeah. And that same month, there was a rumor that Xavier had placed an $80,000 bet on the Chiefs
It wasn't officially confirmed, but he allegedly told an acquaintance he had in the Chiefs world to keep the information private. In this case, he didn't want the attention. The Chiefs lost the game. And despite such a colossal loss, Xavier continued to show up to the Kansas City Chiefs games. And again, this is maybe more evidence that he had the money. Despite losing a huge bet, he still had a lot of money to be able to continue to go to the games.
Yeah. I mean, if I lost $80,000, I think I would probably cut back on my expenses for a while. I don't know. Eat ramen noodles for a few months. I something, whatever. Yeah. So either this guy has tons of money or he has an addiction and he will find a way to make it work.
After this, it's December, Chiefsaholic goes dark. He's not posting a lot. No one's heard from him. It's December 12th, and Chiefs fans are anticipating this matchup with Houston. So this is a big deal, and they're not hearing much from him.
Chiefsaholic makes a tweet on December 13th of 2022. He motivates his followers telling them, hard work pays off. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. So it's like he's back and there were these rumors of him losing money and whatever. In that tweet, he wrote that he graduated from Kansas State University in 2016 and was making $12 an hour in a warehouse.
He claimed that he worked his way up in the world and was now making an excellent living managing multiple warehouses throughout the Midwest region. But again,
We don't know where he's working. We don't know what he's doing. This is just him claiming he graduated from Kansas State and is now a regional manager. You know, I guess that's his way of explaining how he can afford all of this. But of course, he comes out and says this, and some people are paying attention, such as ESPN. But when they check into it, the university claims that there's no record of him. He's not on the list of 2016 graduates.
And of course the chiefs, the holic account goes radio silent, um, a few days after that last tweet. And, uh, it's just weird because it's radio silence because normally he's posting all the time. And of course it gets people speculating what's going on. Is he sick? Did he die? You know? Uh, and then the seats where he normally is at home, well, they're remaining empty.
And he's not responding to any messages or retweets because normally if people are saying, hey, what's up? What's going on? He would respond to some of the people. But the few people who can message him that know his phone number, they call, they message him. There's no response.
So now it's really apparent, hey, we like this guy. We love to follow what he's up to, but we really don't know anything about him. Yeah. It's so funny to me that ESPN and all of his followers are
take that much notice. I guess it's not that big of a deal. It's every celebrity, if they're a YouTuber or podcast or whatever, people do take notice when you go radio silent. People do take notice when your behavior changes, but I just find it's kind of ridiculous that even ESPN is talking about this guy. So this is not in character for him.
especially somebody who is habitually online. Then we find out what happened. Around 9.42 a.m. on December 16, 2022 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Bixby police received a call regarding an armed robbery at the Tulsa Teachers Federal Credit Union. And according to the police chief, Todd Blish, Xavier Michael Babadar, with his face covered, allegedly walked briskly into the bank and
jumped over the counter and put the barrel of what appeared to be a pistol at the chest of a female worker and demanded money. Now, this woman later said that this guy had made a threatening statement that he would blow someone's head off.
And it didn't feel like his first time. It felt like this was someone who had experience. I saw some of the footage of this, you know, when he goes into a bank or when this suspect goes into the bank, they immediately pull out their gun and hop the counter. They don't waste any time. So he's wearing a paintball mask. He's wearing these clothes. And then the bank sees him pedaling away on a bike.
And then so when the cops are like, well, we're looking for somebody on a bicycle. And the police spotted Xavier pedaling a bicycle wearing a backpack that looked filled to capacity. So an officer approached this guy and said, I want to talk with you. The person on the bicycle sped away as quickly as he could, and it ended up in a chase.
but you know, the officers, they caught up with them. Three of them did. And this was at 9 48 AM. So just six minutes after the robbery officers already have the suspect in custody and
When police opened the backpack, they found $150,000 in cash, a paintball mask, the clothing the suspect had been seen wearing during the robbery, as well as the weapon. So they arrest this guy, they charge him with robbery with a firearm and assault while masked, disguised, and he had no ID on his person.
Yeah, it's obvious this is the guy they're looking for. And yet, you know, they see that he has these Kansas City Chiefs tattoos and they ask him, are you a fan of the Chiefs? And he smiled.
So, of course, they end up fingerprinting him and they end up getting his identity, Savior Michael Babadar. So this is going to hit the news. So three days later, it's December 19th, 2022. Chiefs fans and all these online sleuths on Reddit and everything, they begin talking.
searching various police websites between Kansas and Houston in the hopes of solving the mystery of this missing Chiefsaholic fan. And although they knew his first name, it was just enough to find his mugshot. So they
were able to find this man, Xavier, who has been arrested for bank robbery, essentially. Fans knew what his face looked like, so they're seeing this mugshot and they're like, yeah, I think this is the guy. And this goes viral as it does. And the fans begin to speculate that the Tulsa County bank robbery was not Xavier's first time robbing a bank.
But yet they were shocked by this. They were all shocked that he would be caught robbing a bank. Well, I think that's because most didn't think he was a criminal. You know, I realized that he wasn't showing his face all the time, but he was posting all the time. His persona was out there constantly, and they just figured if he was a criminal, he probably wouldn't be out there so much. So maybe a few thought he was a criminal, but I think most didn't suspect that at all. So when this started going viral, they were like, uh-oh.
Wow. And then there were stories popping up like he probably even robbed banks wearing that costume, which is crazy because I think that would have been reported. But but this is where people start to pick sides. Some people were seeing him as a criminal now, but others were saying, no, he's more of an antihero. He's taking from the rich and he's.
giving money away. And, you know, some people like that about him, but some people probably also thought, ah, he's doing this just for himself. People will think, oh, you can rob a bank. They're FDIC insured. Nobody actually loses anything, but you're pulling out a gun, sticking it in some teller's face and
saying you're going to kill them. I mean, yeah, it's, it's not cool. And you're traumatizing somebody and you're making everyone in that bank believe that they could die that day, whether from your gun or the cops raiding the place, stopping the bank robbery. You know, it's, it's a very traumatic experience. Yeah. Very dangerous. So three days after the robbery, Xavier's car was discovered at the back of a lifetime fitness center and,
It was about three miles from that credit union that was robbed. The car was a red Mazda with a KCC forever tag, tinted windows and a bicycle rack on the back. Now the officers who got into the car said it was disgusting. They found old garbage in there like fast food boxes, used dental picks, gloves, target bags and masks assumed to be used in various robberies as well as just random pieces of mail. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, if you're kind of living on the go, this is what your car is going to look like. Detectives looked into his background. They couldn't find any history of a stable home or stable job for that matter. He gave an address and the address came back as a public mail facility called Mail and Copy Plus. So no home address here. So obviously they think he's living out of his car.
And he did have a history of petty crimes. And they just tried to find out as much about this guy as they possibly could. And, you know, he's...
arrested now, but he's given bond. They don't consider him a flight risk. Not only is he given a bond, but it's dropped from $200,000 to $80,000. And he gets set up with a bondsman, a Tulsa bail bondsman named Michael Lloyd. That's obviously, if you know how a bond works, this bondsman will sign for you and
And you have to show up later in court, but you have to wear a GPS monitor on your ankle. You have to do all this stuff in conditions for this bond. So that's how you don't sit in jail until your court date. And Michael Lloyd, if you've seen the documentary, he doesn't play. He's a very serious, no BS guy. Yeah. He points out that the weapon that was held by the suspect was just a BB gun.
And that showed that Xavier never intended to hurt or kill anyone.
That weapon was later identified as a black CO2 pistol. Now, no one was injured, but the female worker, Peyton Garcia, suffered psychological effects as a result of the robbery. I mean, it's no joke. Not that I have, but I've heard from people or watched documentaries, et cetera, news reports, where anybody that's had to face a gun in a robbery or such a tense situation, it can be very traumatizing.
And, you know, much to the disappointment of the country, Xavier was released on bond in February of 2023. And while he was out on bond, he stayed at the spring Hill suites in Tulsa, which
And for eight weeks, he kept to the agreed routine as part of his being released on bond. This bondsman and the public, they hear that it was a BB gun. So a lot of them give him a pass. A lot of them are like, oh, well, you know, he didn't actually want to kill anybody. So he's a good guy. I just think of, you know, Tamir Rice, who was what, an 11, 12 year old boy got shot
because he had a toy gun in a park. I think of all of these other scenarios where people are gunned down because they have a toy gun. So it doesn't really matter to me if you rob a bank with an actual gun that's unloaded, loaded, or a BB gun or a toy gun. It's all the same. Yeah, what you know, no one else knows. And Peyton Garcia, the certified credit union advisor and assistant manager who was held at gunpoint,
She knows that this guy's placing damage
bets on games because he tweets about it. So she's like, well, if you have enough money to place bets on games, then you have enough money to pay me back for losing my job and putting me through hell. Yeah. And Chiefsaholic had placed two $5,000 bets on the Chiefs, one bet for the team to win on February 12th, 2023, and another on Patrick Mahomes being the regular season MVP. And
Now that would result in a $55,000 payout and he won. So he got $100,000 for these bets on March 24, 2023. And he said that this bet was very important to him for his family so he could win his lost money back.
his lost money from that $80,000 bet that he allegedly made and for how many, I don't know, bets he had placed at a casino. I mean, you're getting a check for $100,000 yet you're living in a car. I mean, this just shows that he is completely reckless with his money, completely reckless with everything in his life.
Because most people, as we know, would kill for $100,000. But this guy's probably hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. So less than two months after getting out on bond and just a few days after receiving that check, Xavier cut off his ankle monitor and went on the run.
which resulted in a warrant being issued for his arrest, a million dollar bond and a place on the FBI's most wanted list. He would frequent targets. I guess this is like a running theme in the documentary, uh,
And so the bondsman, he is going around in at least the Kansas City area and he's staking out all the targets. He's staking out places where his ankle monitor last pinged. He's knocking on doors. He's going up to, you know, he was last seen in like a white Corolla or something or Honda Accord and
Any driveway that has a white car in its driveway, this bondman's going around and knocking on these doors saying, do you know this guy? Because he's on the hook for $80,000 to pay if Xavier doesn't show up in court. He is extremely upset, freaking out because he believed in this guy. And everyone that's met Xavier says, oh, he's a nice guy. He's really kind and blah, blah, blah. But
But here he is skipping out on Bond. Here he is not showing any remorse. And when you see videos of him in this hotel watching the Chiefs, he's spitting vitriol at the screen. He is so aggressive and hostile. I would not want to be in the room with him when he's watching a Chiefs game. Yeah, that's for sure.
Xavier, he ended up evading police for over three months before he was eventually arrested on July 7th, 2023 in Lincoln, California, which is about 1800 miles from Tulsa County. Following his arrest, investigation revealed that he was suspected in a string of other bank robberies across five states, two of which he did while on the run.
And investigators also suspected that Xavier had laundered around $1 million between April and December of 2022. And in total, he allegedly purchased and redeemed more than $1 million in chips from various casinos in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois. Yeah, they would, they started this whole investigation where, you know, I mean, he lives in Kansas city, but he would drive to all the surrounding states and,
He would turn his phone off about an hour outside of whatever city, whatever bank he was targeting. And then he would go there, park maybe a mile or so away from the bank, get his bicycle out,
ride over, go in, rob the bank, take off on his bicycle. Because with a bicycle, you can go cut through yards. You can cut through wooded areas. You can evade police really easy on a bicycle. Not that I'm trying to give anyone ideas. And then get back to his car, drive out of the city, and then turn his phone back on. And there was this pattern. So they're like, okay, well,
We see that he has gone to all of these cities, but his phone shuts off just outside of the city.
And then they start finding evidence and DNA and other things. So yeah, they're thinking this guy's a serial bank robber. Following his arrest, the mystery of who Chiefsaholic really was, it started to unravel. And while he was incarcerated, Chiefsaholic said in a statement, being incarcerated makes it very tough for sure, meaning to watch the games. And that's putting it lightly. Being incarcerated makes it very tough. And I do not get a say as to how I can follow the Chiefs this season.
This right there kind of clues you in, I think, that he was addicted. I feel like. I will do my best to catch the games when I can, as I should be able to listen to the television broadcast through a janky 90s-looking battery-powered hand radio, but I will be listening in, just like any other fan. I wish the GOAT, Mitch Holtus, came in on my radio, but being surrounded by concrete makes that impossible."
And for those of you who aren't familiar with Mitch, he is the voice of the Kansas City Chiefs. When you listen to a game, you watch it, you will hear him. And he loves screaming, touchdown Kansas City. And it drives the fans crazy.
Anyway, this guy goes on to say, anything I miss can be updated to me by my mother over the phone. Words cannot describe the mental stress and acceptance I've gone through after having been to every game at Arrowhead since 2016. As I have 74, you can put the wolf in a cage, but no matter what, I am still going to howl for my team. FFG, baby, you already know what it is. Let's go Chiefs.
So he's admitting that this is an addiction, I think. Now, there are degrees of fandom, right? Yeah. But you have people who follow the Chiefs, whether by radio or TV. This guy had to be there.
And then you add in the social media aspect of it, and this becomes his life. Yeah. He literally is quoted saying, I'm not an alcoholic. I'm not addicted to gambling. I'm addicted to the fame. And there it is. It's going to the Chiefs games, being recognized, being part of the community, if you want to call it that. Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's obvious he's got a gambling addiction too, but I think what he's saying is that his addiction to the Chiefs is greater than any other addiction that he could possibly have. And that's no joke. But if his addiction to the Chiefs is so great that he has to gamble and rob banks. Yeah.
You feed that addiction. Well, an addiction is not if you go through withdrawal. An addiction is if it's impacting your life in a negative manner. And this absolutely is impacting his life in a very negative manner and making him do things that are horrendous. Can you imagine the withdrawal he goes through? He's being held behind bars and the chiefs are playing. It had to be just excruciating for this guy.
So, you know, according to Xavier, he harbored a lot of ill will toward his father because he walked out on the family and he said that the home they were living at the time his dad walked out was deemed unacceptable for them to live in. So he and his older brother Noah had to go into foster care for around nine months and
The house gets lost and his mother had to get a job to show the courts that she could support her kids. And she would ride a bicycle to visit them each day that they were away in foster care. So, you know, she tried to get help. She reached out to her family, but there was a lot of drama in that family and they refused to help her.
And Xavier admitted that he wanted to return the favor and support his mother as repayment for working so hard to help him and his brother get through life. And his dream was to buy a house for not just his mother, but also his brother. Now there's this whole thing, Justin, where at first he's saying,
I didn't do it. I'm not guilty, right? Yeah. And his lawyer, his defense attorney, Matthew Merriman, his defense attorney's out there saying, these are all allegations. None of it's true. And saying, everyone's innocent until proven guilty, blah, blah, blah, is making quite a show of it. Yeah. Well-
You know, his bail bondsman, Michael Lloyd, according to him, and this is, of course, we find out later, but Xavier confessed to him that he did it, saying that he went overboard with the gambling and had nothing left.
He said he didn't know what to do, thought about it for a second, didn't think about not doing it, and just did it. And so he's saying, I didn't do it. But then it shifts from, okay, I did rob that one bank, but I didn't rob all of these other banks. And even his lawyer is saying, nah, they don't have anything on them for all these other robberies. It's just this one time. He's going to all these Chiefs games. You can't get him retroactively for all these other bank robberies.
And it's this whole, you know, that's what a lawyer does is they speak for you in public. They try to minimize the damage. But it's apparent that he has these phone records. It said that he left a glove at one of the bank robberies where they got DNA evidence off of it. They found a mask in some bags and another one where they again,
Again, got DNA. It's all matching. So they have some pretty solid evidence against him for a lot of these bank robberies. Yeah, I want to go through some of these because it's kind of interesting to see how much money he got. It's alleged March 2nd, 2022, that he took $70,000 from the Clive, Iowa branch of Great Western Bank. And they say he took the money he made from the robbery and deposited it into his own savings account on two separate transactions. Okay.
The following month, April 28th of 2022, he stole $170,860 from the Omaha, Nebraska branch of First National Bank of Omaha. $163,560 of that was recovered by police.
July 13th of that year, he stole $303,845 from the West Des Moines, Iowa branch of First Class Community Credit Union. And it's during that robbery, Babadar jumped over the teller counter, holding what appeared to be a silver and black firearm, ordering employees to open the bank vault. And he took as much money as he could, $23,000 of which he deposited into his personal savings account.
And over the following months, he was going to various casinos throughout Missouri and Illinois where he was buying casino chips and
and all winnings were then cashed out and deposited again into his personal savings account, which obviously we know why he's buying the casino chips. Yeah. He's trying to launder the money in a very basic manner. Yeah, exactly. And on November 17th of 2022, he stole $125,900 from the Nashville, Tennessee branch of the Tennessee credit union. And that
He jumped over the counter, holding up the employees with what appeared to be a black and silver firearm and asking the vault be opened. He again purchased $20,000 worth of casino chips at a local casino in multiple transactions. And in that case, he left behind a hat. And of course, a DNA profile was captured.
And, you know, there are some more robberies after that. Two weeks later, he went to Clive, Iowa. He attempted to rob a bank and another bank in Minnesota on November 29th. And on November 30th, he stole 25 grand from the Clive, Iowa branch of First Interstate Bank. And, of course, deposited some of this back into his personal savings account afterward. But with this DNA profile from items left behind,
They're able to match him to robberies once they have his DNA. Yeah. Between the glove and the mask and him, they got him. And I understand, once again, everyone's innocent until proven guilty. I understand that defense attorneys have to go out and make statements. But I just feel like his defense attorney just looks like he has egg on his face now because he was...
saying, you know, he could have done this one, but he didn't do all the others and blah, blah, blah. And now he's having to be like, well, you know, he's a good guy and he had a rough life. It's like, no, this, it's the DNA doesn't lie here. Yeah. And you know, he's, he's got to do what he has to do for his client, you know? So, um,
I get the egg on the face thing, but this is how they have to be. They have to help. And he doesn't have a lot to work with here. I feel like, and even Michael Lloyd, the bail bondsman, he may seem like he's on Xavier's side a bit here, but he's also kind of responsible for Xavier. So he had put a GPS under Xavier's vehicle so he could monitor his whereabouts and even check the trash left behind for clues.
And he approached Carla, Xavier's mother, in a Walmart parking lot. And when confronted, she didn't respond. And so Lloyd tells her, I'm going to come back with the necessary papers and take your vehicle. But she didn't bend.
And eventually he found the vehicle because she'd been driving it with personal effects inside, such as money and other items of value, as well as betting slips and lottery tickets. I mean, remember Xavier may have a lot of money, but he's spending it like crazy. And so what little he has, his mother has too. They're sharing. Yeah, but it's, I guess I just think you have this kind of money. Why do you keep living out of your car? Why are you making your mom like live out of her car? Yeah.
Why not just get in an apartment or something? I don't know. I feel sad for them because of this horrendous lifestyle, but at the same time, it kind of looks like a choice, too.
So the NFL draft took place in the spring of 2023 in Kansas City. Marshals and FBI agents were prepared to arrest Chiefsaholic Xavier Babadar in the event that he showed up. They kind of suspected he might. Remember, this guy is addicted to the Kansas City Chiefs, but he didn't show up.
Now, the bail bondsman, Michael Lloyd, was forced to pay the forfeiture bond of $80,000 because he was unable to locate Xavier after three months of searching. However, on the day he wrote the check to cover this, Xavier was caught.
Caught out in California. And that's, I'm happy that the bondsman is going to get his money back right after he literally paid 80 grand. It's not, it wasn't fair to him. And I, I don't know. I'm glad he was caught. And again, the internet's erupting when he's caught and he's being extradited back to Missouri. Uh,
A lot of people are still on his side. A lot of people are still defending him. But Xavier Michael Babadar, who's 30 years old, of Overland Park, Kansas, he's charged with 11 counts of concealment, money laundering, four counts of interstate transportation of stolen property, and four counts of bank theft. And honestly, I think they could have charged him with a lot more.
a lot worse crimes here. So they're only charging him with what they know they can get him on. So what does he end up pleading guilty to? Well, that's just it. I didn't know that he was going to plead guilty and yet he does. February 28th, 2024, Xavier Babadar pleaded guilty to three counts in federal court related to the 11 bank robberies across seven states.
And they sentenced him to 17 years and six months in federal prison without parole. The court also ordered him to pay $532,675 in restitution to the victim financial institutions. I was surprised because I thought he would just deny, deny, deny, deny.
But I think with all of the DNA and the excellent case put together by the detectives, I think he was put into a corner. He didn't have a choice, really. Yeah. And this was a way to minimize the damage was to plead guilty.
Yeah, I think with the amount of banks he robbed, he could have faced life in prison easily. So 17 years, six months, and it's probably 17, six months hard. There's probably not a good chance he's getting out on parole or anything. Yeah, we'll wait and see. But I think that's their intent is to keep him behind bars. So.
He'll be 47, 48 years old when he gets out. Maybe he'll still have somewhat of a life left over. Yeah. The question is, is how does he turn things around? I guess he has a lot of time to figure that out. But yeah, if you're interested in this story, obviously there is an ESPN documentary titled where wolf, like where wolf, where is he?
That's on ESPN. And then there's also the documentary you watched. Can you give people that information? Yeah, it's called Chiefsaholic. I found it out on Amazon Prime. You can find it. I think it might even be out on YouTube. There are multiple documentaries out there on YouTube about him. One's from ESPN, but the Chiefsaholic one is the main one and it's on Prime.
So, yeah. So if you're a football fan, whether you're a fan of the chiefs or some other team out there in the NFL, give some feedback. What did you make of this story that there was a chiefs fan robbing banks to fund his lifestyle and his addiction? Let us know by replying to our social media posts or check us out on Patreon where you can write to us directly there. Yeah.
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