Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes & Joe Burrow Were Targeted at Home: What Their Burglaries Reveal About High Net Worth Security
There is a sentence I hear surprisingly often when discussing security with wealthy individuals:
“Nobody knows me. Nobody cares about me.”
Sometimes it comes from someone worth hundreds of millions or even billions dollars.
They aren’t an actor. They don’t have millions of Instagram followers. People generally don’t recognize them when they walk into a restaurant.
So, from their perspective, why would anybody target them?
The problem is that criminals don’t need the public to know who you are.
JUST ONE person—or one organized group—needs to decide that you are worth targeting.
The nationwide burglary investigation involving homes associated with Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes, Joe Burrow and other professional athletes provides a particularly useful example of how that process can work.
Federal prosecutors charged seven Chilean nationals in 2025 with conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property. According to the Department of Justice, members of the alleged South American Theft Group targeted professional athletes while they were away from their residences or playing games and stole more than $2 million in valuables. The federal complaint describes burglaries involving NFL and NBA players in Kansas City, Tampa, Wisconsin, Cincinnati and Tennessee.
The complaint itself does not publicly identify the athletes by name, but the dates and circumstances correspond with publicly reported burglaries involving Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Joe Burrow, Bobby Portis and other professional athletes.
And this story is relevant again today.
Three defendants wanted in connection with the U.S. investigation were arrested in Argentina in May 2026. Two—Ignacio Zuniga Cartes and Bastian Jimenez Freraut—had also been arrested in connection with a burglary involving the home of former tennis star Juan Martín del Potro. U.S. prosecutors have now formally begun seeking their extradition from Argentina.
But for wealthy families, family offices and estate managers, the most important part of this case isn’t who gets extradited.
It is how the targets were allegedly selected and how their residences were approached.
Because the underlying vulnerabilities are not unique to professional athletes.
They exist every day in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Malibu, Brentwood, Hidden Hills, Calabasas and other affluent Southern California communities.
The FBI says the burglars knew when their targets would be gone
The federal complaint describes what investigators called a “clear and consistent modus operandi.”
According to the FBI affidavit, the group targeted high-profile professional athletes when they were known to be away from home.
The affidavit makes an obvious but extremely important observation: professional sports teams publish their schedules and game locations.
That makes an athlete’s absence predictable.
Investigators further alleged that offenders would approach residences using cover such as wooded or dark areas and then gain entry by breaking windows or forcing sliding doors. Once inside, they concentrated on highly portable valuables such as cash, jewelry, luxury watches and expensive merchandise.
Think about what that means from a security perspective.
The sophisticated part of the operation wasn’t necessarily the physical breach.
The sophisticated part was everything that occurred before the breach.
Identify an attractive target.
Determine when the target will be absent.
Understand the property.
Find a concealed approach.
Identify the weakest entry point.
Enter quickly.
Take high-value portable assets.
Leave.
That is a completely different problem than a random opportunistic burglar walking through a neighborhood trying door handles.
It is an intelligence problem – one that was likely not handled by the hired security company.
Travis Kelce: millions of people knew where he was
On October 7, 2024, the Kansas City Chiefs played the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football at Arrowhead Stadium.
One of the residences identified in the federal complaint as belonging to a Chiefs player was burglarized that same night. Public reporting identified the residence as Travis Kelce’s home. Another Chiefs player’s residence, publicly identified as Patrick Mahomes’, had been burglarized two days earlier.
Consider the security implications of Kelce’s situation.
A burglar didn’t need to secretly follow him across Kansas City to determine whether he was home.
He was playing professional football on national television.
His location was effectively confirmed.
And this leads to an important lesson for high net worth individuals:
Social media is only one source of pattern-of-life information.
We frequently tell principals not to post vacations in real time.
That is good advice.
But the problem is much larger than Instagram.
An executive’s location can potentially become known because:
- the company announces that its CEO is speaking at a conference;
- a charity advertises the principal as a guest;
- a spouse posts from a vacation;
- friends tag the family at an event;
- the principal is photographed courtside;
- an assistant discusses travel publicly;
- an event organizer posts photos in real time;
- public business information reveals predictable meetings;
- household employees expose seemingly insignificant details;
- historical real-estate listings reveal the residence’s layout and features.
None of those pieces of information necessarily creates a serious vulnerability by itself.
But adversaries don’t necessarily operate from one piece of information.
They aggregate.
The FBI says South American Theft Groups use internet research, physical surveillance and commercially available camera and tracking technologies to scope out targets. The Bureau says the groups tend to favor expensive residences near features such as parks, golf courses or walking trails because those environments can provide concealed approaches.
In other words, criminals can conduct their own form of protective intelligence.
Except instead of asking:
“How do we protect this family?”
They are asking:
“How do we exploit this family?”
“Nobody knows me” is the wrong security question
This is where professional athletes can actually teach less-famous wealthy individuals something important.
A professional athlete obviously has visibility.
A successful business owner may not.
But visibility and targetability aren’t synonymous.
Imagine a Southern California entrepreneur worth $150 million.
Perhaps almost nobody outside his industry recognizes him.
But an interested adversary may still be able to determine that:
he owns a valuable company;
he owns an expensive residence;
he regularly travels;
his family maintains predictable routines;
there are high-value vehicles at the property;
expensive artwork, watches or jewelry may be present;
and the residence itself represents significant wealth.
The principal doesn’t need five million followers.
He needs to become interesting to five criminals.
That distinction is fundamental to high net worth security.
The FBI’s Los Angeles office has specifically warned that South American Theft Groups have proliferated in Southern California over recent years. In 2025, property stolen during Los Angeles-area burglaries was recovered in Chile and returned to victims—including property taken during the 2023 burglary of actor Keanu Reeves’ Los Angeles residence. The FBI said the groups conduct surveillance and use technical tools and noted an increase in targeting professional athletes and celebrities.
Nor are only celebrities being targeted.
The FBI explicitly said these crimes affect “celebrities and non-public figures alike.”
That statement is worth remembering the next time someone says:
“Nobody knows me.”
The Joe Burrow case may contain the most important lesson of all
Of all the burglaries described in the federal complaint, the Cincinnati case should be required reading for anyone responsible for residential security.
Public reporting identified the athlete involved as Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.
Burrow was in Texas for Monday Night Football against the Dallas Cowboys on December 9, 2024.
According to the FBI affidavit, roughly $300,000 worth of designer luggage, glasses, watches and jewelry was taken from the residence.
But the remarkable part is this:
There was reportedly already a security detail watching the residence.
The FBI affidavit states that the athlete had left for Dallas the previous day and that a security detail had been deployed while he was gone.
At approximately 6 p.m. on December 9, there was a security shift change.
According to the affidavit, the handover included a walk around the perimeter of the residence, during which no broken windows were observed.
After 6 p.m., however, the security detail was positioned in the driveway at the front of the residence.
The FBI agent stated that investigators believed the burglars entered from a wooded area behind the residence where no security cameras were located.
That is one of the best examples I have seen of a distinction that many high net worth individuals fail to appreciate:
Security presence is not the same thing as security capability.
You can have guards at a house.
You can have cameras.
You can have an alarm.
You can have a gated driveway.
You can have an armed officer sitting in a vehicle.
And still have a poorly designed security program.
The appropriate question isn’t:
“Do I have security?”
It is:
“Can my security detect and respond to the way somebody would actually attempt to defeat this property?”
Those are very different questions.
The front gate isn’t necessarily where your adversary will come from
Human beings naturally focus on normal entrances.
Driveways.
Front gates.
Pedestrian gates.
Front doors.
That’s where residents enter.
That’s where guests arrive.
That’s where deliveries occur.
That’s where employees show up.
But an adversary does not have to respect the property’s intended circulation plan.
If I were conducting a residential security assessment, I wouldn’t only ask:
“How does someone normally enter this property?”
I would ask:
“How would I enter this property if I didn’t want security to see me?”
Those answers are often completely different.
A wooded hillside.
A neighboring property.
A hiking trail.
A drainage area.
An unmonitored side wall.
Dense landscaping.
A canyon.
A rear fence.
An area outside the obvious camera coverage.
A second-story balcony.
The FBI says SATGs specifically gravitate toward properties where features such as parks, golf courses and walking trails facilitate covert approaches and that groups commonly enter through rear windows or glass doors.
This should be particularly relevant to Southern California homeowners.
Some of the features that make an estate desirable can simultaneously complicate its protection.
Privacy landscaping provides privacy.
It can also provide concealment.
A hillside gives the property spectacular views.
It may also create dead ground.
An estate backing onto open space feels secluded.
It can also create an approach route that bypasses the front gate entirely.
Good residential security doesn’t remove those features.
It accounts for them.
Patrick Mahomes: a gated community is a security layer, not a security plan
The Mahomes case provides another useful lesson.
Patrick Mahomes’ residence was publicly reported to be within a gated community when it was burglarized in October 2024.
We will cover his case in detail in a separate article, but the broader principle is important.
Affluent homeowners frequently make another assumption:
“We live in a gated community.”
That’s good.
Controlled community access can be an effective layer.
But it remains one layer.
No gate can independently solve:
contractor access;
service-provider access;
tailgating;
credential sharing;
resident behavior;
perimeter access outside the gate;
social engineering;
insider information;
or someone already legitimately inside the community.
Luxury residential security works best as a series of overlapping layers.
If one fails, another should still create detection, delay or response.
A gate should not be expected to carry the entire burden.
Then there is the hardwired-camera problem
Another conversation I repeatedly encounter with principals sounds something like this:
“We already have hardwired cameras.”
Or:
“My estate manager checked with the security company. Everything is hardwired.”
Sometimes that’s true.
The cameras may run through physical cabling back to an NVR.
That is good.
But then I look at how the residential security officer actually monitors the estate.
He’s sitting outside in a vehicle.
Or at an exterior guard post.
And he’s watching those “hardwired” cameras through an iPad connected over Wi-Fi.
That changes the analysis.
The cameras themselves may remain hardwired.
The recorder may continue recording locally.
But the operational monitoring chain now includes a wireless dependency.
Camera → wired network → recorder.
Good.
But then:
Recorder/network → wireless access point → Wi-Fi → tablet → security officer.
If the operator loses that connection, the camera system may continue doing exactly what it was designed to do:
record.
Unfortunately, recording beautiful video of the people who stole your property is not the same thing as detecting them while they’re still outside.
The correct question isn’t:
“Are the cameras hardwired?”
It is:
“Where are the failure points between detection and response?”
That includes cameras, early warning systems like beams and radar, alarms, network architecture, backup power, operator workstations, communications and human procedures.
And this issue isn’t theoretical in Los Angeles.
In October 2025, LAPD announced arrests involving an alleged transnational burglary operation that used fake profiles on a cleaning-service app to gain access to homes. Detectives said searches recovered Wi-Fi jammers, camouflaged trail cameras, GPS trackers and burglary tools.
Importantly, the federal complaint involving the athlete burglaries does not allege that the Kelce/Mahomes/Burrow defendants used Wi-Fi jammers in those specific burglaries.
We should not conflate the cases.
But the Los Angeles case demonstrates why a sophisticated residential security program should not depend unnecessarily on one wireless pathway.
Cameras should be positioned from the adversary’s perspective
Residential camera installations are frequently approached as a technology project.
“How many cameras?”
“What resolution?”
“Which brand?”
“Can I see them from my phone?”
Those are reasonable questions.
But there is a more important question:
“What do the cameras actually see?”
The Burrow affidavit is especially instructive because investigators believed the offenders approached through a wooded area where no cameras were positioned.
An adversarial camera assessment approaches the property differently.
Instead of beginning with where cameras are easiest to install, we examine:
Where would somebody hide?
Where can somebody reach the structure without crossing an obvious field of view?
Where does landscaping obscure detection?
Will landscaping reflect the IR light at night?
What happens at night?
What does a person look like when backlit?
Can one camera actually identify someone, or merely document that a human-shaped object walked past?
Does foliage change seasonally?
Can someone approach from an adjacent property?
Are there places where someone can remain before committing to entry?
Does the camera operator actually monitor these areas?
What happens when something is detected?
Technology becomes valuable when it supports a response process.
Without that process, it can become an expensive forensic archive.
Bobby Portis and the $1.48 million safe
The burglary involving a Milwaukee Bucks player—publicly identified as Bobby Portis—provides another remarkable lesson.
According to the federal affidavit, surveillance footage captured two individuals breaking a bedroom window and entering the residence on November 2, 2024, while the Bucks were playing the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The offenders allegedly removed an entire safe containing watches, chains, personal items, jewelry and cash, as well as designer luggage and bags.
The estimated value of the stolen property was approximately $1.484 million.
The investigation later produced extraordinary evidence.
After obtaining iCloud data, investigators found photographs timestamped only minutes after the burglary that allegedly showed suspects with high-value watches, jewelry, burglary tools and the damaged safe.
The FBI affidavit says investigators believed the group had returned to a nearby hotel, forced open the safe and photographed themselves with the stolen property.
There is another simple residential-security lesson here:
Buying a very expensive safe doesn’t necessarily solve the problem if somebody can take the entire safe.
Asset security should consider not merely whether the container itself is difficult to open, but whether it can be removed, how quickly an intrusion will be detected, what barriers the offender encounters before reaching it and how long the offender realistically believes he has inside the property.
At MSB Protection, we favor hidden safes. A visible safe can lead to a hold-up situation where an intruder might try to force the principal to open the safe. Sometimes with violence.
Security is often about controlling time.
Detection buys time.
Physical hardening consumes the adversary’s time.
Response reduces the time available.
Good systems force the offender to race against all three.
“Let’s hope nothing happens”
There is another problem in residential security that rarely gets discussed publicly.
Most shifts are uneventful.
That is normal.
A security officer can potentially work at an estate for months or years without experiencing a serious security incident.
Over time, complacency can become institutionalized.
I’ve heard residential assignments described within the industry as an “easy gig.”
Sit in the vehicle.
Watch cameras.
Open the gate.
Collect a paycheck.
Repeat tomorrow.
And that mentality can exist inside an entire security company.
I call it the:
“Let’s hope nothing happens and get paid while we can” model.
The security company fills the schedule.
The client sees somebody that looks like security.
The estate manager receives a kick-back for hiring the company his friend referred.
The invoice gets paid.
And if nobody challenges the system, everybody assumes it works.
The problem is that a security system isn’t truly evaluated on the 300 nights when nobody attempts to defeat it.
It is evaluated on the one night when somebody does.
Joe Burrow’s case illustrates why.
There was security.
There were reportedly cameras.
There had been a perimeter walk.
Yet investigators believe someone exploited an area where detection was insufficient.
That doesn’t automatically mean the individual officers were incompetent. We don’t know their post orders, staffing level, technological capabilities or contractual limitations.
It does tell us something much broader:
Merely staffing a post does not equal managing risk.
There was likely no early warning system.
Police experience and residential protection are not the same profession
High net worth families are also frequently reassured that their team consists of current or retired police officers.
Law-enforcement experience can be tremendously valuable.
But it should not end the conversation.
An excellent police officer does not automatically become an expert in residential protection simply because he carries a firearm professionally.
The missions are different.
Police officers are trained to enforce law, respond to calls, investigate crimes, make arrests and deal with an enormous range of public-safety situations.
Professional residential protection also requires understanding areas such as:
protective intelligence;
estate vulnerability assessment;
pattern-of-life exposure;
surveillance awareness;
access control;
protective advances;
household staff and vendor risk;
security technology;
emergency planning;
family movements;
and identifying pre-incident indicators before something becomes a law-enforcement problem.
A retired police officer who has actually studied and practiced those disciplines can become an outstanding protector.
But the badge itself doesn’t automatically provide that knowledge.
The danger arises when the assignment becomes retirement income rather than a protective mission.
If someone describes protecting an UHNW family as an “easy gig,” I would want to know exactly what that person believes his job is.
Residential protection should be uneventful.
It should never be mindless.
Why this matters even when overall crime is going down
None of this means wealthy Southern California families should live in fear.
In fact, Beverly Hills Police reported encouraging property-crime numbers for the first quarter of 2026.
Reported burglaries fell from 60 during the first quarter of 2025 to 30 during the same period in 2026—a 50% reduction. Larceny/theft and motor-vehicle theft also declined.
That’s excellent.
But citywide crime trends and individual risk are different measurements.
A city can become safer overall while one particular principal becomes more exposed.
For example:
A lawsuit receives media attention.
An employee is terminated.
A business becomes politically controversial.
A family begins displaying more wealth.
A residence becomes publicly associated with the owner.
A stalking or fixation issue develops.
An executive assumes a more visible corporate role.
Or an organized burglary crew identifies a property it considers attractive.
The FBI’s Los Angeles office has specifically said these organized theft groups have proliferated in Southern California.
And in May 2026, LAPD said detectives connected one alleged SATG member to approximately 25 burglaries throughout Los Angeles, including West Los Angeles and multiple Valley divisions.
So the appropriate response isn’t panic.
It is recognizing that low probability does not mean zero probability, particularly when the consequences of failure are high.
“I’m not famous” didn’t make Brian Thompson irrelevant to an attacker
There is another case I often think about when someone tells me:
“Nobody cares about me.”
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was not a celebrity in the traditional sense.
Before December 2024, most Americans probably would not have recognized him walking down the street.
Yet on December 4, 2024, Thompson was shot and killed outside a Manhattan hotel where UnitedHealth was holding an investor conference.
New York authorities described the shooting as targeted. Thompson’s wife also told reporters that he had previously mentioned receiving threats, although she did not know the details.
Reporting at the time said Thompson was not accompanied by a security detail when he was attacked.
We do not know that Thompson personally said:
“Nobody knows me.”
We don’t know what his personal rationale regarding security was.
And I would never put those words in his mouth.
But his killing demonstrates an essential point:
Being unknown to the general population does not make you unknown to someone who has developed an interest in you.
That’s the mistake wealthy individuals make when they use fame as their primary measure of risk.
The attacker doesn’t need society to recognize the target.
The attacker recognizes the target.
High net worth security should start with risk—not bodies
This ultimately brings us to the larger problem.
Many wealthy families believe they are buying a security program when they are actually buying labor.
A client calls.
The security company finds someone with a firearm permit.
The officer receives an address.
He arrives at 6 p.m.
He sits at the gate for 12 hours.
Another officer replaces him.
The company invoices the client.
There may be virtually no analysis behind the assignment.
No comprehensive vulnerability assessment.
No protective intelligence.
No examination of red zones around the residence.
No adversarial review of the cameras.
No assessment of the family’s public exposure.
No integration with household staff.
No emergency procedures.
No ongoing evaluation of whether the protective operation actually addresses the family’s evolving risk.
That is providing a body.
It isn’t necessarily providing security.
A professional high net worth security program should operate from a risk-management mindset.
What are we protecting?
What threats are credible?
Where are the vulnerabilities?
What would the consequences of failure be?
Which risks can be reduced?
Which risks must be accepted?
What combination of people, procedures, physical barriers, intelligence and technology provides the appropriate mitigation?
Those questions form the basis of an actual security strategy.
We will explore that entire framework in our upcoming High Net Worth Security: Complete Guide for Southern California Families.
The athlete burglaries were an intelligence failure before they were a burglary problem
This is perhaps the most important takeaway from the entire federal investigation.
Look again at what the FBI says these groups do.
They research targets online.
They conduct surveillance.
They use tracking and camera technology.
They select expensive residences.
They seek concealed approaches.
They use burner phones.
They use rental vehicles and fraudulent identities.
They divide responsibilities among members.
They work through separate cells.
And they maintain buyers—or “fences”—capable of converting stolen luxury property into cash.
That is an organized process.
The burglar doesn’t begin his work when he crosses the property line.
By then, a significant portion of the work may already have been completed.
And that means the security team should begin its work much earlier too.
What wealthy Southern California families should ask themselves
If you live in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Malibu, Holmby Hills, Brentwood, Hidden Hills, Calabasas or another affluent Southern California community, I would not respond to these cases by simply buying more cameras.
I would begin with questions.
If somebody wanted to determine when our house was empty, how would they do it?
How much information about our family can be found publicly?
Can somebody determine where the principal is from public events or social media?
Are our cameras actually monitored locally, or does our security team depend on Wi-Fi?
Where are the camera blind spots?
Do we have an early warning system in place?
Which portions of the perimeter provide concealment?
Could somebody approach from a neighboring property or open space?
Who has access to our gates, codes, keys and alarm system?
Which vendors know the property’s layout?
What happens when household staff changes?
Does security patrol the entire property or mainly sit at the entrance?
What happens during shift changes?
Has anybody actually tested the system adversarially?
Does the security company understand why each post exists—or did it simply put an officer wherever the estate manager told it to?
And perhaps most importantly:
If I were trying to defeat my own security, where would I start?
The real lesson from Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes and Joe Burrow
It’s easy to look at these cases and conclude:
Of course professional athletes get targeted.
They are famous.
They’re wealthy.
Everyone knows when they’re playing.
All true.
But those are not the most important lessons.
The important lessons are that the alleged offenders:
selected attractive targets;
identified predictable absences;
used intelligence and surveillance;
looked for concealed approaches;
focused on weak points rather than strong points;
and operated as part of a larger organized network.
The names could change tomorrow.
Instead of Travis Kelce, it could be a technology founder.
Instead of Patrick Mahomes, it could be a private-equity executive.
Instead of Joe Burrow, it could be a family whose name most Americans have never heard.
The underlying security principles remain exactly the same.
You don’t have to be famous to be wealthy.
You don’t have to be famous to be predictable.
You don’t have to be famous to have a vulnerable residence.
And you certainly don’t have to be famous for a criminal to decide you are worth targeting.
So when I hear:
“Nobody knows me. Nobody cares about me.”
My answer is simple:
You do not need everybody to know you.
You only need the wrong person to know you.
And if your security strategy depends on that never happening, you don’t have a security strategy.
You have hope.
About MSB Protection
MSB Protection provides executive protection, residential security and security risk management for high net worth and ultra-high net worth individuals and families.
Our approach to residential security is built around security capability rather than security presence. Effective protection requires more than placing an armed individual at a gate. It requires understanding the principal, the residence, the family’s patterns, the surrounding environment, potential threats, technological vulnerabilities and the procedures that connect detection to response.
For families, family offices and estate managers in Beverly Hills, Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Malibu, Brentwood, Pacific Palisades, Beverly Park, Hidden Hills, Calabasas and surrounding Southern California communities, the objective should be straightforward:
Find the vulnerabilities before somebody else does.
By Michael Braun — Former Special Unit Operator, former Manager at Gavin de Becker & Associates, and Founder & CEO of MSB Protection, an executive protection and residential security firm serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients.
Braun has built his career at the intersection of specialized protective operations, executive protection, residential security, protective intelligence, and security risk management. His experience spans special-unit operations, leadership within Gavin de Becker & Associates, and the design and oversight of private security programs for some of the most demanding UHNW environments in Southern California.
He has been recognized by The Top 100 Magazine as a leading CEO in the private security field and is the subject of an upcoming Marquis Who’s Who feature highlighting his leadership and contributions to the profession.
Today, Braun is widely recognized for his expertise in executive protection, UHNW estate security, residential security operations, protective intelligence, adversarial security assessments, and security auditing—particularly in Beverly Hills, Malibu, Bel Air, and the broader Southern California luxury-residential market. His work focuses on moving private security beyond simply “providing a body” and toward intelligence-led, risk-based protection programs designed to identify vulnerabilities before an adversary can exploit them.
Looking for UHNW Security Services?
If you are a high-net-worth or ultra-high-net-worth individual, family office, estate manager, or executive looking for a top-tier UHNW security provider, MSB Protection specializes in executive protection, residential security, protective intelligence, and comprehensive security risk management for some of the wealthiest individuals and families in the world.
Our approach goes far beyond simply placing a protector at a residence or beside a principal. We evaluate the complete security environment—from threat exposure and residential vulnerabilities to personnel, technology, procedures, protective intelligence, and emergency response—to build a protection program around the risks that actually exist.
Our private protectors undergo an exceptionally rigorous and continuous training program. In addition to twice-monthly, in-person training, our personnel receive ongoing assignments and instruction in protection theory, residential security, protective intelligence, threat recognition, emergency response, and the principles that govern professional private protection.
We do not build our teams around personnel simply looking for an off-duty “security gig.” Every MSB protector is selected, trained, and continuously developed specifically for the profession of private security and executive protection. Our expectation is that the individual assigned to protect a principal or residence understands why the security program is structured the way it is—not merely where to stand.