Questions About Commanders’ Dealing with of Cash Referred to FTC

The congressional committee’s letter particulars the ways allegedly utilized by Washington, primarily based largely on its interview in March with Jason Friedman, who labored for the staff for twenty-four years and final served as a vice chairman of gross sales and customer support, in addition to supporting documentation he submitted. Friedman was fired in October 2020 for poor efficiency and inappropriate habits, in line with the staff. He testified to the committee a couple of follow he mentioned some staff executives referred to as “juicing,” during which cash was deliberately misallocated within the staff’s accounting system and used for different functions.

Friedman supplied the committee with two e mail exchanges, from April 2013 and Might 2014, during which he mentioned he conferred with Washington staff executives about transferring NFL ticket income into different classes that might not be topic to the league’s revenue-sharing program, reminiscent of licensing Charges for school video games or live shows hosted on the staff’s stadium in Maryland. In testimony cited within the letter, Friedman mentioned that staff executives stored one set of books with the altered numbers submitted to the NFL and a second set with the correct accounting that was proven to Snyder.

Friedman, who mentioned he oversaw the processing of safety deposits, additionally instructed the committee that after Snyder purchased the staff in 1999, the staff deliberately made it troublesome for ticket holders to recoup their refundable safety deposits. Whereas the staff stopped accumulating deposits for many seat leases a couple of 12 months after Snyder turned the proprietor, Friedman shared with the committee info exported from the staff’s digital database to assist his declare that, as of July 2016, the staff had retained safety deposits for about 2,000 accounts totaling round $5 million.

The letter contains screenshots of the Friedman spreadsheet supplied to the committee cataloging these ticket holder accounts, together with one below Goodell’s identify with an unreturned safety deposit of about $1,000. The committee wrote that the deposit appeared to have been collected earlier than Goodell turned commissioner in 2006 and that it had not been decided when it was paid or whether or not the quantity had since been refunded.

Friedman additional testified that his boss would direct him to transform unclaimed safety deposits into “juice” at Snyder’s habits, notably when the staff’s gross sales have been sagging. Snyder gave instructions to cease this follow round 2017, Friedman instructed the committee.

There was no different proof introduced within the letter that instantly linked the scheme to Snyder.

In a press release, a spokesman for Republicans on the Oversight Committee pushed again on the allegations within the letter. The Democrats on the committee, he mentioned, have been “attacking a personal firm utilizing the claims of a disgruntled ex-employee who had restricted entry to the staff’s funds, was fired for violating staff insurance policies, and has his personal historical past of making a poisonous office atmosphere.”

Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL, mentioned the league continues to cooperate with the committee and has supplied greater than 210,000 pages of paperwork. The league appointed Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor, to “evaluate the intense issues raised by the committee” together with allegations of monetary impropriety raised within the letter.

The letter was despatched ten months after the league fined the Washington staff $10 million and compelled Snyder away from the staff for a number of months after a separate investigation discovered proof of harassment towards ladies within the staff’s entrance workplace.