The office of Virginia Attorney General Jason S. Miyares (R) reached a $1.3 million settlement with the Washington Commanders over allegations that the team improperly withheld deposits from season ticket holders under the ownership of Daniel Snyder, Miyares announced Tuesday.
The Commanders previously reached settlements with the consumer protection division
of the Maryland attorney general’s office and
with the D.C. attorney general’s office over similar allegations.
“I am pleased that we were able to reach a fair and reasonable agreement with the Washington Commanders that requires restitution of unlawfully retained security deposits to consumers,” Miyares said in a statement. “Our investigation found that the Commanders’ prior ownership unlawfully retained security deposits for years after they should have been returned to consumers. I thank the team’s current ownership for cooperating with this investigation, and for working towards rectifying the consumer harm we identified.”
According to Miyares’s office, the Commanders have returned more than $600,000 in deposits to approximately 475 season ticket holders. The team agreed to pay $600,000 in civil penalties and $100,000 in costs to resolve the investigation, Miyares’s office said.
“We are pleased that this settlement has been reached resolving issues that occurred under prior ownership,” the Commanders said in a statement issued through a spokesperson.
Snyder is responsible for paying the fines associated with the settlement, according to a person familiar with the matter.
NFL team owners
voted in July to ratify Snyder’s $6.05 billion sale of the Commanders to a group led by private equity investor Josh Harris. The NFL said when the sale was approved that Snyder would
pay the league $60 million to close the transaction after an NFL investigation, conducted by attorney Mary Jo White, concluded that the team withheld revenue it should have shared with other franchises and that Snyder sexually harassed a former team employee.
Miyares’s office said it opened its investigation in April 2022. The investigation found the Commanders had entered into long-term contracts with season ticket holders since at least 1997, requiring some of them to pay refundable security deposits.
“Despite contractual obligations to return these deposits within thirty days of contract expiration, the Commanders unlawfully retained significant sums of security deposits, often imposing additional conditions on consumers seeking refunds,” Miyares’s office said.
Snyder purchased the team from the Jack Kent Cooke estate in 1999. Miyares’s office did not immediately clarify whether the investigation found evidence of wrongdoing regarding ticket deposits before Snyder’s ownership.
The Commanders sent approximately 650 letters to former season ticket holders with unrefunded security deposits on file in 2014 and represented that they “would remit unclaimed funds to state unclaimed property offices,” Miyares’s office said in its announcement. It added, “Despite that commitment, the team failed to remit a single unclaimed security deposit to a state unclaimed property office, including to the Virginia Department of the Treasury, until at least 2023.”
Brian E. Frosh (D), then Maryland’s attorney general, announced a settlement in November 2022 by which the Commanders, who did not admit to the allegations as part of the settlement, would refund all security deposits that had not yet been returned to consumers and pay a $250,000 civil fine. The office of D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb (D) announced a settlement in April 2023 by which the Commanders were required to pay a $425,000 fine to the District and refund more than $200,000 in deposits to D.C. ticket holders.
The team’s security deposit practices were first revealed publicly through an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability (then called the House Committee on Oversight and Reform). Former Washington sales executive Jason Friedman told the committee that, under Snyder’s ownership, team executives instructed Friedman to withhold security deposits from customers when their lease terms ended and to create barriers to discourage customers from requesting their deposits be returned. Friedman alleged the team converted the non-refunded deposits into revenue. The committee referred its findings to local attorneys general the Federal Trade Commission.
