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 workforce for twenty-four years and final served as a vp 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 response to the workforce. He testified to the committee a couple of follow he mentioned some workforce executives referred to as “juicing,” wherein cash was deliberately misallocated within the workforce’s accounting system and used for different functions.
Friedman supplied the committee with two electronic mail exchanges, from April 2013 and Might 2014, wherein he mentioned he conferred with Washington workforce executives about shifting N.F.L. ticket income into different classes that might not be topic to the league’s revenue-sharing program, corresponding to licensing charges for school video games or live shows hosted on the workforce’s stadium in Maryland. In testimony cited within the letter, Friedman mentioned that workforce executives stored one set of books with the altered numbers submitted to the N.F.L. and a second set with the correct accounting that was proven to Snyder.
Friedman, who mentioned he oversaw the processing of safety deposits, additionally advised the committee that after Snyder purchased the workforce in 1999, the workforce deliberately made it tough for ticket holders to recoup their refundable safety deposits. Whereas the workforce stopped gathering deposits for many seat leases a couple of yr after Snyder turned the proprietor, Friedman shared with the committee data exported from the workforce’s digital database to help his declare that, as of July 2016, the workforce had retained safety deposits for about 2,000 accounts totaling round $5 million.
The letter consists of screenshots of the spreadsheet Friedman supplied to the committee cataloging these ticket holder accounts, together with one beneath Goodell’s title 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 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 behest, notably when the workforce’s gross sales have been sagging. Snyder gave instructions to cease this follow round 2017, Friedman advised the committee.
There was no different proof introduced within the letter that straight linked the scheme to Snyder.
In an announcement, 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 workforce’s funds, was fired for violating workforce insurance policies, and has his personal historical past of making a poisonous office atmosphere.”
Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the N.F.L., 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 workforce $10 million and compelled Snyder away from the workforce for a number of months after a separate investigation discovered proof of harassment towards ladies within the workforce’s entrance workplace.
