Travis Kelce and Patrick Mahomes’ glitzy steakhouse rocked by lawsuit claiming partners siphoned millions and ‘extorted’ lawyer as he battled blood cancer

Travis Kelce’s restaurant business partners are accused of wrongly ‘siphoning’ millions of dollars from their firm and ‘extorting’ their general counsel while he recovered from blood cancer.

Kelce and Kansas City Chiefs fellow star Patrick Mahomes partnered with glitzy restaurant firm Noble 33 last year to open 1587 Prime, a Kansas City steakhouse and celebrity haunt.

On its VIP opening night on September 9, Mahomes, Kelce and his megastar fiancée Taylor Swift dined there to celebrate their new business venture. The glamorous evening went off without a hitch for the front-of-house.

But in the back, a multi-million-dollar feud exploded – as Noble 33 co-founders Tosh Berman and Michael Tanha allegedly ambushed their partner and chief legal officer Matthew Syken with his termination from their hospitality firm, The Madera Group (TMG), in what he claims was retaliation for exposing misconduct.

Now the Chiefs stars’ restaurant play might be fumbling on the first drive, as a tense legal battle threatens to engulf the firm with allegations of fraud, embezzlement and discrimination.

Syken has claimed in lawsuits filed in Nevada and California that his sudden firing on opening night was part of a vicious retaliation, after he exposed Berman and Tanha’s alleged plot to siphon millions of dollars from a gift card scheme while Syken was off work dealing with a blood cancer diagnosis.

Kelce and Mahomes have not been named in the lawsuit, and are not accused of any wrongdoing.

The chief legal officer wrote in legal filings that Noble33 partnered with a gift card company called inKind, in a deal that paid Noble ‘millions of dollars in advance payments in exchange for the sale of store credits redeemable at Toca Madera restaurants’ – their culinary chain.

Syken, Berman and Tanha’s partnership has included popular fast-casual restaurants Tocaya Organica and Tender Greens, as well as upscale LA restaurant Casa Madera and Mexican steakhouse chain Toca Madera.

Syken claimed Berman and Tanha improperly poured those millions from inKind into their own private accounts.

‘Although presented as a marketing and financing program, these arrangements allowed Berman and Tanha to generate significant up-front cash that was later distributed to themselves,’ Syken wrote in a motion filed in a Clark County, Nevada court where part of their legal battle has been waged.

Syken claims in his court filings that when he found out and confronted the pair, Berman and Tanha tried to ‘extort’ him by threatening his legal license. They also claimed they withheld his pay, fired him, and canceled his medical insurance during his cancer recovery.

‘Syken was undergoing treatment for blood cancer and was on medical leave,’ Syken’s October 21 Clark County filing said.

‘When he returned to work in late 2023, he began uncovering irregularities in Noble 33’s accounting and the lack of corresponding deposits to TMG [The Madera Group]. Financial statements were opaque and incomplete, and requests for transparency were ignored, Syken’s Nevada lawsuit continued.

‘By mid-2025, after investigating, Syken determined that millions of dollars in revenues had been diverted from TMG through Noble 33 in violation of the injunction and the governing agreements.

‘In September 2025, during the opening of Noble 33’s ‘1587 Prime’ restaurant in Kansas City, Berman and Tanha delivered a letter to Syken purporting to terminate his employment as President and General Counsel of TMG.’

Syken claims Berman and Tanha falsely accused him of taking $257,000 in improper business expenses.

‘The letter alleged financial misconduct against Syken,’ his filing said. ‘TMG refused to provide supporting evidence despite demands.’

Syken noted that the opening night was ‘a star-studded event, attended by celebrities such as Taylor Swift, Travis Kelce, and Patrick Mahomes,’ in his California federal complaint.

Representatives for Kelce and Mahomes did not immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment. 

Photos obtained by the Daily Mail also show Kelce and Mahomes laughing with restaurant staff at a company meeting ahead of the September opening.

Berman and Tanha deny all wrongdoing and claim in their own legal filings that Syken ’embezzled’ and ‘defrauded’ their company by ‘surreptitiously putting personal expenses on his company-issued credit card and authorizing overpayments of his salary’.

‘Syken used TMG’s corporate credit card to buy first-class plane tickets for his family, to fund vacation expenses in Cabo, to pay amounts owed to his divorce attorney, and to consume elective medical treatments at an anti-aging clinic,’ they alleged in a December 5 counterclaim filed in California federal court.

‘He also had TMG wire more than $100,000 to which he was not entitled to his law office.’

The restaurateurs claimed Syken charged $7,000 on the company card to a clinic ‘offering hair restoration, testosterone replacement therapy, Botox, light therapy, and other cosmetic services’ on May 11 2023, and another $5,000 in the next two months.

‘Syken also expensed trips to the Aquarium and Disneyland, clothing from Patagonia, Target runs, Netflix fees, Apple App Store purchases, ice cream treats, and video games on the Company’s credit card,’ they alleged in their federal counterclaim.

They claimed to have logged ‘nearly $150,000’ in personal expenses on company credit card and ‘more than $100,000 in alleged improper extra pay Syken gave himself.

‘Syken’s wild claims were made only after being fired for stealing from his employer. He made them weeks later, hoping to deflect attention away from his embezzlement,’ Berman and Tanya’s lawyer Brian Timmons told the Daily Mail.

‘He has yet to produce a shred of evidence to support his bogus claims – after many months and proceedings.   

Syken called allegations that he used the company card at an anti-aging clinic ‘false’ and ‘absurd’, in a statement to the Daily Mail, saying the payments were for cancer medication from a compounding pharmacy, ‘covered by the company per my agreements’.

​Syken claimed that over $100,000 of the allegedly embezzled funds was legitimate business travel over a five-year period, that some of the charges were made by another business partner of Berman and Tanha, and that the other alleged improper pay was board-approved remuneration.

‘The defendants have been caught embezzling millions of dollars from shareholders and are grasping at anything to deflect what they’ve done,’ he told the Daily Mail.

Syken’s complaint was originally filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on October 14, but was sealed on Berman and Tanha’s request, and then moved to federal court.

A new, partially-redacted complaint filed on December 26 accuses Berman and Tanha of harassment, civil extortion, wrongful termination, disability discrimination and breach of contract.

In their counterclaim, Berman and Tanha say there is ‘nothing improper’ about their gift card deal with inKind, and claim that Syken himself ‘voted to increase the amount of inKind funding’.

‘Syken did not raise any concerns about any of these arrangements—that is, not until after he was terminated for cause,’ their December legal filing said.

‘There were no misrepresentations or accounting shenanigans, and Noble 33 certainly did not use the inKind platform to ‘siphon’ money from TMG.’

‘It is a complete lie that I ever ‘voted to increase’ inKind funding for the simple reason: I never sat on the board of the company. I never had any vote,’ Syken told the Daily Mail, claiming that he ‘had been questioning them for months’ about the inKind deal and financial flows before he was fired.