The congressional committee’s letter particulars the techniques allegedly utilized by Washington, based mostly largely on its interview in March with Jason Friedman, who labored for the group 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 conduct, in accordance with the group. He testified to the committee a few observe he stated some group executives known as “juicing,” wherein cash was deliberately misallocated within the group’s accounting system and used for different functions.
Friedman offered the committee with two e-mail exchanges, from April 2013 and Might 2014, wherein he stated he conferred with Washington group executives about transferring N.F.L. ticket income into different classes that may not be topic to the league’s revenue-sharing program, resembling licensing charges for faculty video games or concert events hosted on the group’s stadium in Maryland. In testimony cited within the letter, Friedman stated that group executives saved 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 stated he oversaw the processing of safety deposits, additionally informed the committee that after Snyder purchased the group in 1999, the group deliberately made it troublesome for ticket holders to recoup their refundable safety deposits. Whereas the group stopped gathering deposits for many seat leases a few yr after Snyder turned the proprietor, Friedman shared with the committee info exported from the group’s digital database to help his declare that, as of July 2016, the group had retained safety deposits for about 2,000 accounts totaling round $5 million.
The letter consists of screenshots of the spreadsheet Friedman offered to the committee cataloging these ticket holder accounts, together with one beneath 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 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 group’s gross sales had been sagging. Snyder gave instructions to cease this observe round 2017, Friedman informed the committee.
There was no different proof introduced within the letter that instantly 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 stated, had been “attacking a non-public firm utilizing the claims of a disgruntled ex-employee who had restricted entry to the group’s funds, was fired for violating group insurance policies, and has his personal historical past of making a poisonous office atmosphere.”
Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for N.F.L., stated the league continues to cooperate with the committee and has offered 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 sexual harassment in opposition to Snyder that had been raised in a congressional listening to in February.
These allegations had been made eight months after the league fined the Washington group $10 million and compelled Snyder away from the group for a number of months after a separate investigation discovered proof of harassment in opposition to ladies within the group’s entrance workplace.
