One day after a ranking member of the House Oversight Committee said the investigation into the Washington Commanders and owner Daniel Snyder was “over,” there’s more trouble for the NFL franchise.
Washington D.C. attorney general Karl Racine announced a second lawsuit against the Commanders stating the team is guilty of “implementing an illegal scheme to cheat District ticket holders out of their deposits for season tickets and use the money for its own purposes.”
This is a separate consumer protection lawsuit from the one Racine filed against Snyder, the Commanders, the NFL and commissioner Roger Goodell last week regarding the organization’s toxic workplace.
The suit alleges that the Commanders hold “nearly $200,000 in unreturned security deposits” paid by D.C. residents.
The Commanders offered the following response from a team spokesperson:
The Team has not accepted security deposits for over 20 years in the case of premium tickets and over a decade in the case of suites, and we began returning them to season ticket holders as early as 2004. In 2014, as part of a comprehensive review, Team management was instructed to send notices to over 1,400 customers with deposits and return all security deposits requested.
Further, the team engaged an outside law firm and forensic auditors to conduct an extensive review of the team’s accounts which found no evidence that the team intentionally withheld security deposits that should have been returned to customers or that the team improperly converted any unclaimed deposits to revenue.
Racine offered a link to the complaint on Twitter:
Read the complaint and see more about the penalties we’re seeking: https://t.co/FZKkYbCuYN
— AG Karl A. Racine (@AGKarlRacine) November 17, 2022
Earlier this month, the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia opened a criminal investigation into the team’s alleged financial impropreities.
The NFL’s investigation into Snyder and the Commanders remains ongoing.