The 22-page letter – written by team lawyer Jordan Sief to FTC President Lina M. Khan and received by ESPN – refuted allegations by former team member Jason Friedman that the team was involved in malicious financial matters. practices, influencing consumers and the NFL, to increase their revenue. In addition to the letter, there were 83 pages with signed affidavits, emails and texts. Paul Szczenski, the group’s former chief financial officer for more than eight years, said in a signed affidavit: “I can state emphatically that I have never helped maintain or seen anyone else maintain a ‘second set’ of books.” was one of three former senior team members to submit signed affidavits. 2 About These points were made by the House Oversight and Reform Committee in a letter to the FTC last week, highlighting the allegations of Friedman, who spent 24 years in the agency’s ticketing department as vice president of sales and customer service. He was fired in October 2020, two months after Jason Wright took over as team president. The FTC acknowledged that it had received the letter, but did not usually say whether it would investigate. He could also be handed over to attorney generals in Maryland, Washington, DC and Virginia. everything was copied in the letter to the FTC. The Washington letter described Friedman’s allegations as “baseless” and “false and reckless” and was based on “pure speculation”, according to Mitch Gershman, a former Washington executive who left the team in 2015 but for five years. was later accused by former officials of sexual harassment in a Washington Post article. Gershman and others said Friedman was out of work because he did not work in accounting and was therefore unaware of all financial discussions. Friedman worked at the team’s stadium in Landover, Maryland, about an hour from his training facility in Ashburn, Virginia, where the letter said he worked in finance and accounting. The letter also stated that the commission never gave the team a chance to respond to Friedman’s allegations. He also portrayed Friedman as a disgruntled former employee who, until recently, had pressured many people in the organization – including Wright – via email and text messages to allow him to return, while also sending a letter to owner Dan Snyder after his dismissal in October 2020 praising him. In January, he told Wright via email: “I had a year to think about my past weaknesses. I learned and I regret these shortcomings. If you welcomed me, I would be back there to help in a moment’s notice.” Friedman claimed that the agency had deliberately categorized ticket revenue for a standing-up ballroom in Washington as collecting revenue from college games and concerts, allowing him to pocket money and not share with the NFL. He also said that they did not return the security deposits in the season tickets, claiming that it affected 2,000 customers at a cost of 5 million dollars. However, the Washington letter says it has evidence that it did not divert revenue from NFL games to other events. Friedman had written an email on May 6, 2014 to Stephen Choi, then chief accountant in Washington, asking for help processing additional ticket sales and revenue. The email reported that Friedman charged $ 55 per ticket, but the price was $ 44 on the system. The difference would be written off as fake licensing fees. According to the email, Choi asked him to apply the “juice” from the extra $ 11 per ticket to the Navy-Notre Dame race that will take place that year. Friedman said “juice” was a term for covert revenue for the team. The letter from Washington stated that the “juice” was slang for “upward revenue”. Groups must share 40% of their revenue with the other 31 teams. However, the college game was considered undivided revenue, which meant that Washington would receive an additional $ 162,360 without losing a portion of the revenue pool. Washington’s letter stated that Choi forwarded the email to the accountants, leaving Friedman off the chain. In an August email, Trey Flythe, who was then the director of the team’s financial ticketing department, told Choi and Szczenski that “the Navy licensing fee has been changed to 14RedRev”. This meant that they were now considered 2014 Redskins revenue. The email included a screenshot of the $ 162,360 account listed on 14RedRev. The letter also noted that the team undergoes annual audits by an outside company, BDO, and every several years by an NFL auditor, Ernst & Young. Friedman claimed that proceeds from non-NFL events at the FedEx Field were not subject to these controls. The Washington letter says this is not true. In his affidavit, Szczenski said, “there were no categories of events that were ‘excluded’ from external audits; concerts, college football matches and football matches were all part of the Group’s audited financial statements and could all be audited by auditors. ». Former Adviser-General David Donovan said the same in his affidavit. The letter also states that the Commission should not have relied on Friedman’s testimony as to when the alleged revenue sharing system took place. Friedman said it happened “mainly from 2010 to 2015”. The Washington letter states that the team resigned from the NFL for $ 27 million, limiting revenue sharing because it was paying for projects approved in 2013 that were completed two years later. The letter states that this resignation was known to the group’s accounting and finance department, but “without Friedman’s knowledge”. Prior to that, Washington had a 15-year waiver that ended in 2012 because it had paid for the stadium itself. The letter also states that Friedman made a mistake in the way the team handled the security deposits. He claimed after Snyder bought the group in 1999 that the group had created artificial barriers to make it difficult for consumers to collect security deposits. Either they would target deposits from people who had forgotten they had made one, or those who inherited positions and did not know it existed. He said that with corporate accounts, the name in the deal may change over time and, once again, the new person may not be aware of the initial deposit. Friedman said team executives told employees to make it difficult for customers to receive their deposits by increasing the steps required to withdraw the money. Some deposits were returned. Friedman also told the commission that the group stopped charging for security deposits a year after Snyder became the owner. Donovan, who left the team in 2011, said Friedman never made those allegations. In his affidavit, Szczenski said the only deposits that were converted into revenue were made when a client broke his contract. He said over a period of 10 years that resulted in additional revenue of $ 200,000. The letter also included a copy of a letter the organization sent to customers in 2014, informing them that they might be entitled to a refund based on their balance. It included boxes to check if the account name and address were correct. It also contained a return address for the refund collection letter, as well as an email address to which customers could send. In addition, the letter states that the group’s unclaimed property, including security deposits, was examined in 2014 by the Unclaimed Property Department of the Virginia Treasury, which had full access to the group’s security deposit information. Following the review, the department did not recommend any further action, but asked the group to pay $ 7,330.15 in unclaimed funds to the state as “abandoned property”. Finally, the letter stated that the team did not approve of Friedman’s practice of selling general admission tickets to brokers in 2009. Friedman had claimed to the Commission that he had become the autumn guy for the practice, telling them Choi and Gersman had told him to falsify their ticket status. Friedman said he would tell potential customers that no general admission tickets were available and would push them to buy club-level seats. According to the letter, there was no NFL policy against ticket sales in 2009. He also stated that none of Friedman’s contracts were approved by the financial or legal department of the team. The letter claimed that Friedman had used a rubber stamp with Gersman’s signature, which allowed him to “keep the agreements secret”. “Never [Snyder] he was informed, he was not happy, “Gersman said in his affidavit. “It led me and other senior executives to cancel the contracts immediately and we spent months negotiating with brokers to cancel the deals as much as we could. “It would not make sense for Mr Snyder to direct these broker sales just to change and cancel them later, at a significant financial cost to the team.” Donovan said in his affidavit that he recommended to Snyder that Friedman be fired after the incident. Friedman claimed that instead of being fired, he received a raise.
