BURGLARIES HARMING ATHLETES IN OUR WORLD OF WILDFIRES AND POLAR VORTEXES
It’s time to play serious defense at home, where stars have been ambushed by creeps who apparently include four Chilean nationals — one of whom stole Joe Burrow’s garb and alarmed a swimsuit model
The first call would be to Elon Musk, who is capable of creating peace or blowing up the planet or — greetings, Mr. President — ripping Donald Trump’s AI project. Shouldn’t an athlete with multiple millions of dollars protect a mansion with the best in extrasensory security? Sports people always should counter criminals with surveillance technology because, hey, they usually get what they want in life.
But for some odd reason, Joe Burrow allowed his $7.5 million home in the Cincinnati suburb of Anderson Township to be ransacked by four Chilean nationals. This is a nice community with a Kentucky view that happened to involve swimsuit model Olivia Ponton, whose mother called the police and said, “Someone is trying to break into the house right now. My daughter is there. This is Joe Burrow’s house. She is staying there. He’s at the football game. She’s wondering what she should do, if she should be hiding, or if she should be going outside.”
Then Olivia called 911, saying after finding a shattered bedroom window, “Someone broke into my house. … It’s like, completely messed up.”
Well, why wouldn’t Burrow guard his mansion with black rhinos and rattlesnakes? Why let Sergio Cabello, Alexander Huaiquil-Chavez, Bastian Morales and Jordan Sanchez into his house, allegedly, before they were arrested? Worse, a month later, one of them was found wearing “an old LSU shirt and Bengals hat” stolen from Burrow’s home when they were stopped in nearby Hamilton, Ohio, with marijuana burning in their car. We feel for the quarterback, who finally stayed healthy and had a terrific season but couldn’t get a break with Ponton at home as he played in Dallas.
“I feel like my privacy has been violated in more ways than one, and way more is out there than I would want out there and that I care to share,” Burrow said. “We live a public life and one of my least favorite parts of that is the lack of privacy, and that has been difficult to deal with my entire career. I’m still learning, but I understand it’s the life that we choose. It doesn’t make it any easier to deal with.”
The problem: Burrow is far from alone. He has been joined in the burglary category by Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Luka Doncic, Mike Conley Jr., Bobby Portis Jr., Evgeni Malkin and Tyler Sequin. All have been haunted by creeps who know when the athletes are away from home. The FBI has made connections to "transnational South American Theft Groups” involving “reportedly well-organized, sophisticated rings that incorporate advanced techniques and technologies, including pre-surveillance, drones, and signal jamming devices.”
Athletes are busy people, but not too busy to play home defense against organized creeps who are scoping their neighborhoods. It’s hard to believe the raids keep happening when the NFL, the NBA and all leagues are on watch. This is a national story that has prompted attention, yet a week doesn’t pass without another episode. “While many burglaries occur while homes are unoccupied, some burglaries occur while residents are home,” the FBI said. “In these instances, individuals are encouraged to seek law enforcement help and avoid engaging with criminals, as they may be armed or use violence if confronted.”
Said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell during a league meeting: “When you see somebody on television and realize they're not home, does that open up potential? So, yes, there are things that all of us can do to take precautions — and should do.”
A robbery impacting Jared Goff has transformed his security outlook. All it takes is 10 or 15 minutes to seize a home. “It’s violating. So ever since then, when I am on the road, there’s people there,” the Detroit quarterback said.
What about Burrow? What about other stars? “Obviously, it's frustrating, disappointing, but I can't get into too many of the details,” said Mahomes, who is occupied as he guns for a fourth Super Bowl title in Kansas City. “But, obviously, it’s something you don't want to happen to anybody, but obviously yourself.”
“They took most of my prized possessions,” said Portis, who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks and has offered a cash reward in exchange for anonymity.
Dak Prescott’s fiancee had $40,000 of luxury goods stolen from her car. “Others can look up and just see how much we make or maybe an address, and that puts us subject to a target,” the Dallas quarterback said. “I think for anybody across the league, or anybody of celebrity status, I guess you could say, it's unfortunate but, yeah, we have to take and do what's necessary to protect us and our family.”
We live in a world of wildfires and polar vortexes. When athletes have millions on top of millions, common folks aren’t too worried about their theft losses. What they might do is study the deadly firestorm plan of Rick Caruso, the billionaire developer whose house was burned in Malibu’s Carbon Beach but who managed to save his Brentwood home and his upscale mall in Pacific Palisades. How?
Private firefighters.
He went private to save his soul. Why can’t the athletes spend and seek protection? “Our property is standing,” Caruso told the New York Times. “Everything around us is gone. It is like a war zone.”
Joe Burrow has the money to move elsewhere. He doesn’t deserve to have someone invading his home, taking his LSU cap and bothering his swimsuit model. Why not shield and shelter, the essence of sports?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.