If/when the Commanders are sold, the new owner will have one less legal entanglement to untangle.
D.C. attorney general Brian L. Schwalb has announced that the Commanders will pay more than $625,000 to resolve claims that the team failed to properly refund security deposits paid by residents of the District of Columbia.
Of the amount, more than $200,000 serves as reimbursement. Another $425,000 will be paid to D.C. for restitution, attorneys’ fees, legal costs, and contributions to the D.C. litigation support fund.
“Rather than being transparent and upfront in their ticket sale practices, the Commanders unlawfully took advantage of their fan base, holding on to security deposits instead of returning them,” Schwalb said in a statement. “Under this settlement agreement, our office will maintain strict oversight over the Commanders to ensure all necessary steps are taken to reimburse fans for the refunds they are entitled to. Our office takes seriously the obligation to enforce DC consumer protection laws by holding accountable anyone that tries to exploit District consumers.”
The team denies all allegations and claims in the settlement agreement.
“We have not accepted security deposits or seat licenses in more than a decade and have been actively working to return any remaining deposits since 2014,” team spokesman said in a statement. “We are pleased to have reached an agreement on the matter with the DC Attorney General and will work with the office to fulfill our obligations to our fans.”
The issue of security deposits not refunded by the team came to light during the Congressional investigation of the team, along with allegations of other financial irregularities.
The league’s ongoing investigation of the Commanders, as conducted by Mary Jo White, includes these issues. Given the settlement, there’a a good chance she’ll eventually find that the Commanders, under owner Daniel Snyder, were indeed engaged in irregular financial practices. The only question is whether it was accidental or deliberate.
Schwalb clearly believes it was no accident. In the statement released by his office, Schwalb’s office alleges that “the team deceptively kept many of these security deposits for years after fans’ contracts expired, improperly using the security deposits for its own purposes.” Schwalb’s office also contends that the team “unfairly and deceptively imposed further cumbersome requirements, which complicated the process for fans to reclaim their deposits.”
Schwalb’s office further contends that the team was told about the situation in 2009, but that it “persisted in enforcing these extra obligations on consumers.”
Again, the team denies all allegations. But it’s also cutting a sizable check to make the allegations go away.
Regardless of anything else the team did or didn’t do on Daniel Snyder’s watch, that would seem to be more than enough to justify a massive punishment. The team, in the opinion of the D.C. attorney general, deliberately cheated and stole from its own customers. It’s shameful conduct by an organization that in some respects has become shameless in recent years.
The sooner Snyder is gone, the better off The Shield will be. And this bizarre holding pattern into which the league has settled pending a sale invites real questions as to whether the owners of the other teams truly care about any of this, or whether they simply don’t want to create a standard that could potentially be used against them in the future.