Dhar Mann, the new Chief Kindness Officer tapped by the NFL for the upcoming Super Bowl LX, has come under scrutiny due to his past fraud convictions.
Mann, whose large following on various social media platforms has earned him billions of views, was tapped as the NFL’s Chief Kindness Officer and his appointment instantly raised a few eyebrows due to his past felony fraud charges, per the New York Post:
In 2011, Mann pled “no contest” to five felony counts of defrauding the city of Oakland, which accused him of fraudulently pocketing more than $44,000 he’d received from city redevelopment grants, according to The New York Times.
Prosecutors reportedly reduced the charges from 13 to five felony counts. He was fined $37,500 and faced no jail time.
Mann told The New York Times in 2021 that the conviction was later expunged.
Mann, however, has been open about his past in previous interviews, saying he turned his life around through meditation and prayer.
“When I created my first video, it was of me talking in front of a camera for five minutes offering my ‘followers’ (a.k.a., my few hundred friends on Facebook) motivational advice,” Mann told Business Insider in a 2020 interview. “It took me over 100 takes to record that video, and it ultimately did nothing.
“… Over time, I realized that not only was I not that good at telling motivational stories in front of camera, but also I didn’t enjoy it. Instead of giving up, I found a new strategy that worked for me: I decided to use family and friends as ‘actors’ in my videos to tell the stories I wanted to share, and I would just come in at the end to summarize the lesson to be learned,” he added. “When I adjusted my style of content to this new format, 168 videos later, my total views exploded to over four billion.”
When promoting his new role with the Super Bowl, Mann satirized his role as kindness officer.
“Instead of a halftime show, we’re gonna do a hug time show,” Mann said in a TikTok video. “How about instead of throwing these [penalty] flags, we just present them nicely.”
In 2023, employees of Mann who helped on his videos said they were subjected to poor working conditions, claims he denied.
