Shilo Sanders, University of Colorado football star and son of Deion Sanders, has been under a microscope ever since he filed for bankruptcy last October on the heels of an $11.8 million court judgment owed for allegedly assaulting a former high school security guard in Texas.
However, the bankruptcy case seems to have raised some serious questions about Sanders’ funds and where he is keeping his assets, fueling the alleged victim’s past theory that he’s attempting to evade his responsibilities.
Sanders’s latest legal predicament stems from an alleged involvement in the 2015 assault of John Darjean, a high school security guard at Focus Academies in Dallas, Texas.
Darjean alleges that he was assaulted by Sanders, who was a student at the time, when he confronted him over a cellphone, according to court documents obtained by Westword.
Darjean’s confrontation seems to have been instigated by a phone call Shilo made from the school office to his mother, Deion Sanders’ ex-wife, Pilar Sanders, after the teen had been brought there for being disruptive in class. While the school is believed to have had a strict no-phones policy, Shilo apparently called his mother, and at some point, Deion, who had been contacted about the situation, was informed of the phone call and ordered Darjean to confiscate his son’s device.
According to the court filing, Deion told Darjean, “You’re my brother in Christ. I need you to go get the phone…as soon as you get the phone from him, give me a call back.”
When Darjean attempted to seize the device at the behest of Coach Prime, that’s when the security guard says the alleged assault took place.
The following year, in 2016, a lawsuit was filed in which the victim stated the incident left him with “severe and permanent injuries including a broken neck, damage to his cervical spine, permanent neurological injuries and irreversible incontinence.”
When the alleged assault occurred, Shilo’s father, Deion, was the CEO of Focus Academies and head football coach at the Focus high school, Triple A Academy. Shilo Sanders later attended and graduated from Trinity Christian High School in Lubbock, Texas.
However, Darjean not only blames Coach Prime for putting him in the life-threatening situation in the first place, he also says the 56-year-old father has been doing everything possible to help his son evade his responsibilities — including saying that Darjean provoked the incident.
In an April 2024 interview on Jason Whitlock’s “Fearless” podcast, Darjean said, “Deion always talks about how, ‘Man, you know I’m trying to teach these kids how to be on the up and up, in Jesus name, and how to be responsible.’ And he steals the videos. he puts me on TMZ and changes his story. He doesn’t want to sit down man to man.”
Darjean is referring to a 2016 TMZ article in which Deion Sanders released a statement and video footage claiming that Darjean used “unnecessary force” to secure Shilo’s cellphone.
“Please check out this video which shows he was the aggressor, not my son, and there was NOTHING WAS WRONG WITH HIM AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE MATTER. This grown man was on top of My son Shilo the entire time during the interaction,” said Sanders. “I DON’T KNOW HOW HE’S ABLE TO LOOK HIS KIDS IN THE EYE AFTER THIS LIE, BUT I FORGIVE HIM because the pressures of life will cause some folks to do things they never fathomed doing. GOD BLESS.”
Darjean claims the footage submitted to TMZ was taken out of context, saying that only a brief piece of the clip was submitted to skew perception. However, when attempting to shift blame didn’t work, Darjean says that Deion removed himself from the equation altogether.
Darjean sued Shilo, Pilar, and Deion. However, Deion mysteriously managed to slip out of the suit. Darjean said he was confused about how Deion was able to get his name removed.
“I don’t know what happened,” he told Whitlock during his sit-down. “If I could talk to my lawyer at that time of the day, I would say, ‘What happened? How did he slip out of this? And why didn’t you appeal it? It’s kinda strange that you back out, and Deion slips out. That’s really strange to me.’ So the lawsuit is on Pilar and Shilo Sanders; I have the judgment, the $11.8 million. But I know I am dealing with somebody high-powered, and he’s going to do anything he can.”
But, a filing by Darjean’s attorney showed that a 2017 deposition with Deion was cut short after the Pro Football Hall of Famer took issue with the line of questioning. The two-time Super Bowl winner eventually won a summary judgment ruling against Darjean, which resulted in his name being taken off the claim by January 2019.
Darjean says that Deion, as a father, is culpable in his son’s actions, adding, “Deion knew how bad Shilo was because he had been to the juvenile detention center multiple times before that for running away, getting in trouble and fighting and all kinds of stuff. So, Deion knew his son was very bad. I knew nothing about Shilo Sanders. I mean, I probably saw him on TV a couple times, but I wasn’t keeping up with Shilo Sanders and Deion Sanders, and Pilar. So I didn’t know what type of person he was.”
Darjean recalls Deion describing his son as “out of control” on the day the incident took place.
Though the incident happened in 2015 and the lawsuit was filed in 2016, due to the notoriously slow legal system, the case did not move to trial until 2022. USA Today reports that the court experienced some difficulties tracking Sanders down to serve him a trial notice. The notice was ultimately sent to an out-of-date address in South Carolina, but Sanders had already transferred from the University of South Carolina to Jackson State to play football under his father. Therefore, Sanders presumably never received the notice and ultimately missed his court date. Because Sanders was not there to dispute Darjean’s version of events, the court ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, awarding him $11.89 million.
In October 2023, Shilo Sanders filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The 24-year-old football star likely made the financial decision to get the debt from the multi-million dollar judgment discharged. However, it remains unclear whether he can use the bankruptcy court to erase that debt, as he hopes.
Unfortunately, Sanders was not able to rely on his attorneys’ guidance because he had been unrepresented since April 2020. This also means Sanders did not have an attorney who could have received trial notices and attended the Darjean trial on his behalf. After April 2020, Shilo’s attorneys asked to withdraw from the case after they were informed by their client, Shilo, who was an undergrad student at the time, that “he is unwilling or unable to continue funding the defense of this case.”
It’s unclear when Sanders retained representation after his initial lawyers withdrew, but his current attorney claimed his client first learned of the judgment in 2023.
The bankruptcy case gets messier for Shilo, unfortunately.
When he filed for bankruptcy, Shilo claimed his personal assets totaled just over $300,0000. However, the claim raised questions about whether the college football star was being honest about his income or just trying to avoid paying his debt.
Declaring bankruptcy typically means debts will be erased. “People are allowed to discharge debts in bankruptcy to give relief to the honest but unfortunate debtor,” Angela Littwin, a bankruptcy expert and law professor at the University of Texas, told USA Today. But, there are exceptions to the rule, one of which takes “willful and malicious injury” into consideration. Therefore, Darjean’s push to collect on the judgment will likely muddy the waters.
Playing at Colorado under his Hall of Fame father is at least partly responsible for Shilo’s increased exposure, which has helped him land deals with major brands such as Google, Starz, and EA Sports. Darjean asserted his belief that Shilo is using the companies he owns to protect his NIL earnings, Big 21 LLC and SS21 LLC.
Darjean’s attorneys previously pointed to the clothing from high-end fashion houses that Sanders would frequently wear.
“Contrary to the schedules, Shilo has admitted acquiring vast amounts of high-end and expensive clothing,” a court filing from the attorneys stated, per Westword. “For example, on his YouTube Channel posted on May 4, 2023, he states, ‘Alright, we at the Louis (Vuitton) Store I am trying to spend at least $50,000 today.’”
Also, according to Darjean’s attorneys, Sanders failed to declare $477,881 in assets, which include $300,000 in a Robinhood account, $8,000 in a Wells Fargo account, or anything from his NIL projects. Sanders reportedly failed to disclose income generated at least 32 times.
No one from the Sanders camp has commented on the matter.
