How a 19-Year-Old Patriots Fan Helped the FBI Catch the Man Who Stole Tom Brady’s $500K Super Bowl Jersey

When you’re the most premier passer in the history of the National Football League, everything you wear on gameday becomes its own coveted treasure for both historians and fans alike. Unfortunately, for Tom Brady, that meant having his jersey stolen on a rather routine occasion. 

While jersey thefts aren’t inherently uncommon in the world of sports, one sticky-fingered reporter managed to take things a bit too far by stealing Brady’s jersey just moments after the New England Patriots’ historic overtime victory against the Atlanta Falcons at Super Bowl LI. Unfortunately for the reporter, the jersey was valued at $500,000 on the official police report, and its absence from the locker room prompted an immediate investigation from the FBI. 

However, it wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Investigation that would ultimately be responsible for catching the thief. Following his moment of glory on the Super Bowl stage, Brady entered the locker room, where he would take his jersey off and place it in his bag before heading towards the showers and restroom area. 

Once he returned and noticed that it was gone, he slowly began to realize what had happened and became increasingly frustrated. In fact, this wasn’t the first instance in which someone had stolen a Super Bowl jersey from him. 

Nevertheless, the FBI began to use its manpower to spend hours reviewing stadium footage and inevitably spotted an outlier: a man walking out of the Patriots’ locker room with a plastic bag. They now had a target, but the bureau was struggling to identify him. 

The investigation began to stall until a 19-year-old Patriots fan by the name of Dylan Wagner came forth with an answer. In a subsequent interview with CBS Boston, Wagner explained how he informed the FBI that he had their man. 

“I knew exactly who had it,” Wagner exclaimed, and he certainly did. It was none other than Mauricio Ortega, a credentialed reporter, who just so happened to take a selfie with Brady just moments before stealing his jersey.

Wagner was able to provide everything: a name, photo evidence, and even two different addresses. But how? 

Well, turns out he had previously sold a Deion Branch jersey to Ortega through an online sales platform, and the reporter just couldn’t help but to show off the other jerseys that were in his collection. 

“He sent me 30 photos of his collection. Front and center was Tom Brady’s Super Bowl 49 Jersey. I asked him outright, ‘How did you get that?’ and he says, ‘I’ll tell you later,'”

Had it not been for Wagner making a note of such a suspicious customer, the seven-time Super Bowl champion may have never seen his jerseys again. Thankfully, the photos that Wagner provided were more than enough to secure a search warrant. 

Once the investigation was concluded, the members of the FBI’s Boston division made sure to hand-deliver both of Brady’s jerseys to the Patriots. 

While it was ultimately discovered that Ortega was in possession of several other pieces of stolen Super Bowl memorabilia, the disgraced reporter was never formally charged. The persisting rumor is that this was the result of an undisclosed agreement between him and Brady for the return of the jerseys.