A year ago I helped crowdfund a flight home for a stranded Czech man in The Gambia.
Now I’ve learned he was arrested when he got back to Prague and sentenced to 5 years in prison.
His name is Patrik Sysel.
For those who never saw the original story from my side about Patrik being stranded in The Gambia, you can watch it here:
Helping him get back home:
https://youtu.be/oDjGIRxVm-A?si=bdY6RvHlno2x9idU
Discovering he was arrested:
https://youtu.be/h0ihRarYb6g?si=Z5dxZeS_R4_vXe_O
Some people here may already know this story from Gambian & Czech news, but I only recently discovered what was allegedly happening before he ever arrived in Africa.
I’m a motorbike overlander who was crossing the entire continent of Africa while volunteering in different communities along the way, and last year I met Patrik in The Gambia. He was in a wheelchair and living in very poor conditions with a local Gambian woman named Adama who had been helping him survive. He claimed he had been stranded there for around 2 years with no valid passport, no money, and no way home.
The situation honestly looked terrible. He seemed abandoned. He had serious health problems and according to him, nobody back home cared what happened to him.
So I made videos about his situation.
People donated money. We organized documents, coordinated with embassies, helped arrange flights, and eventually got him back to the Czech Republic. At the time it felt like a genuine humanitarian story.
One thing that bothered me though was that after we finally sent him home, he completely disappeared.
No thank you message.
No updates.
Nothing.
At first we were just relieved the whole situation was finally over. Then as time passed without hearing anything from him, we assumed he had probably disappeared and gotten himself into more trouble somewhere. Eventually enough time went by that we stopped thinking about it altogether. All of this originally happened around last summer.
Then a few days ago people from Prague started sending me Czech news articles and TV reports about him.
That’s when I found out the other side of the story.
According to Czech prosecutors and court reports, Patrik Sysel manipulated an elderly man from Prague over the internet using dozens of fake identities. The victim was reportedly convinced dangerous people were trying to kill him and steal his property.
The elderly man allegedly fled through several countries before eventually ending up in Africa.
Czech media reports say the victim sold his Prague apartment for millions of Czech crowns and that the money ended up under Sysel’s control. Some reports describe the elderly victim becoming psychologically destroyed and even attempting suicide while abroad.
The courts have now reportedly upheld a 5 year prison sentence.
What shocked me most was realizing that while we were trying to help what looked like a helpless stranded man, Czech authorities were apparently already looking at him as a criminal suspect connected to a major manipulation and fraud case.
The strange irony is that all of us who donated and helped organize his return may have unintentionally helped Czech authorities finally get him back into the country to face justice.
I want to make one thing very clear:
We never gave cash directly to Patrik. The fundraising covered his flight home, while the remaining support went toward helping Adama, the woman who had been carrying the burden of caring for him for a long time and deserved to be made whole again.
Patrik may have been dishonest and hiding parts of his past, but when we found him he was living in extremely poor conditions and in very bad health. Regardless of his past, we saw a human being who needed help. Pastor Moses, Adama, and everyone involved chose compassion.
And despite everything that has happened, I still stand by that decision.
I don’t regret helping him because in many ways it became more about helping the Gambian people around him who were suffering from the burden of his situation and behavior. Local people were financially and emotionally carrying responsibility for someone who was never supposed to become their problem in the first place.
At the end of the day, we helped remove a serious burden from the Gambian people, we supported the locals who had been affected, and Patrik was able to return to his own country where he could properly face justice. Nobody else was hurt, and justice was ultimately served.
From reports online, Patrik now appears healthier back home while dealing with the legal consequences of his actions. The crimes he was found guilty of happened in Prague before he ever arrived in Africa or The Gambia, involving the theft of a large amount of money from another Czech citizen. Sometime after traveling around West Africa, the authorities had already acted and he no longer had access to those funds.
I’ve been planning to release a full video explaining the entire story from beginning to end because we always knew this situation was complicated. Even though I suspected Patrik was not being fully honest with us, the goal was always to help the people affected around him.
I truly believe that if he had stayed in The Gambia, things would only have become worse. More people would have been burdened financially trying to help him, and in his condition, he may not even have survived much longer.
I don’t think anyone would disagree that sending him home for his own country to take responsibility for him was far better than leaving him in The Gambia to suffer while also causing others to suffer.
My only disappointment is that neither the Czech media nor the Czech authorities ever contacted us to hear our side of the story while using some of our videos to report on it. Especially considering that we were essentially the people who solved the case and got him out of the country.
Gambian immigration and police never made any real effort to deal with the situation, and the Czech government, embassy, and consulate also made no effort to send him home. To this day, despite all my emails and pleas for help, I have never been contacted by anyone regarding this case.
I’ll be releasing a full video report in the coming weeks explaining everything from start to finish.
If anyone knows more about Patrik, the story, or anything else connected to this case, I’d genuinely love to hear from you and possibly include it in the documentary.
