'I will not relent': Judge keeps Shilo Sanders locked in $12 million bankruptcy fight

A hallway confrontation from 2015 is still running Shilo Sanders’ life, and a federal judge just made sure it stays that way.

On March 4, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Michael Romero denied Sanders’ attempt to toss a lawsuit from the trustee overseeing his bankruptcy estate, keeping alive claims that he moved roughly $250,000 that should have gone to creditors.

Judge’s latest ruling keeps the bankruptcy law fight alive

Sanders filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2023 after a Texas court entered a default judgment of about $11.89 million against him. The judgment came out of a civil case brought by former school security guard John Darjean, who says Sanders assaulted him at a Dallas-area high school in 2015 and left him with permanent injuries.

The bankruptcy case put Sanders’ finances under a microscope. Trustee David Wadsworth was appointed to track down assets that could be used to pay Darjean and other creditors. In October 2025, Wadsworth filed a complaint accusing Sanders of violating bankruptcy law by shifting money that should have been part of the estate.

According to the filings, Wadsworth is targeting around $250,000 in alleged unauthorized transfers from Sanders’ Big 21 account, along with nearly $203,000 in payments linked to his Headache Gang brand and other NIL deals. The core question is simple: how much of that money legally belongs to Sanders, and how much should have been locked in for creditors once he went bankrupt.

Sanders asked the court to dismiss the complaint. Romero refused. In his ruling, the judge stressed that he was not deciding the facts yet, only whether Wadsworth’s case was strong enough to move forward. “The Court's role in deciding the Motion to Dismiss is not to resolve factual disputes or weigh potential evidence outside the four corners of the Complaint,” Romero wrote. He added that the trustee had “supported his claims with sufficient factual allegations regarding Sanders' bank accounts, his NIL proceeds deposits into the Big 21 Account, and Sanders' control over Big 21 and Headache Gang.”

Romero closed the door on any quick escape. “Whether the evidence will ultimately substantiate the Trustee's claims is a matter to be decided at trial.”

A 2015 hallway incident still controls Shilo Sanders’ future

All of this traces back to one day in September 2015. Darjean says a 15-year-old Sanders refused to hand over his phone, then assaulted him, leaving him with a broken neck, cervical spine damage, permanent neurological issues, and lifelong incontinence.

Darjean sued Sanders and his parents in 2016. Deion and Pilar Sanders were later dropped from the case. Shilo did not appear when the lawsuit finally reached trial in 2022, which led the court to hit him with the $11.89 million default judgment. In 2024, Darjean made it clear he is not backing down, saying, “I will not relent until the truth is revealed and I receive my $12 million.”

Bankruptcy was supposed to give Sanders a way out. Instead, it created two separate legal battles. One is the trustee’s case over those NIL and business transfers. The other is a trial set for Aug. 31 that will decide whether Sanders’ actions toward Darjean count as “willful and malicious” injuries.

That August trial is critical. If the court decides the injuries were willful and malicious, the debt tied to Darjean would stick with Sanders. If not, he could discharge it and move on from the bankruptcy process entirely. The trustee’s complaint sits on top of that question, waiting for the answer.

Meanwhile, his football career is stuck. Sanders went undrafted in 2025, then signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers as a free agent. He flashed at times in preseason but ended that stint with an ejection after taking a swing at an opponent and has been waiting for another shot since.

Colorado alum Matt McChesney has already floated a different path, saying on the Zero 2 Sixty podcast, “I’m not saying that in jest at all.” He added, “I’m 100% serious. Shilo doesn’t have a job, coaching, or playing… You can still make money on YouTube and be a college coach.”

For now, though, the next move is not on a field or a sideline. It is in a courtroom, where a teenager’s decision in a school hallway is still deciding how much of Shilo Sanders’ future he actually owns.


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