Sanders's younger brother,
Shedeur, was drafted in the 5th round of the 2025 NFL draft by the
Cleveland Browns. An October 2016 lawsuit filed in Dallas District Court alleged Sanders attacked a security officer. Following a dispute about Sanders disrupting a high school class, John Darjean claimed Sanders slammed his elbow into Darjean's chest and continued to hit Darjean after he fell. The case went to trial in 2022, but Sanders did not appear for the trial, so a
default judgment was entered against him. The court ordered Sanders to pay Darjean $11.89 million. In October 2023, Sanders filed for bankruptcy, declaring he had $11.3 million in liabilities, including the court judgment against him. The bankruptcy petition stated Sanders had $478,000 in assets, including a 2023
Mercedes valued at $75,900 and necklaces valued at $75,000. Sanders’ attorney amended the petition in December 2023 to reduce the value of his assets to $320,000. This reduction included the removal of the high-value necklaces from the list of assets as they were alleged to have been on loan pursuant to an
NIL deal with Saki Diamonds. Darjean is currently contesting the bankruptcy filing, alleging Sanders transferred funds received from NIL deals to his company, Big 21, LLC, as a way to improperly shield his assets from the judgment he obtained against Sanders personally. Sanders has admitted he did not disclose several social media NIL deals and that he is the sole owner of Big 21 LLC and SS21 LLC, but denied improperly failing to disclose contracts with those companies related to his NIL deals. There were at least five investigations into the Sanders-Darjean incident. A 2024 examination by
USA Today of those investigations reported that four of them "favored John Darjean". The fifth "initially sided" with Sanders, but after additional information surfaced, the investigators changed their position and decided that fault for the incident simply was "unable to be determined". ==References==