The story referenced in this link was updated later in the evening after it was originally posted. It's now titled "Criminal Investigation Opened In Soccer Stadium Finances" (yes, they capitalized the first letter of each word for some reason). Anywho, it spins quite an interesting yarn. A very long article, but plenty of entertaining plot twists along the way.
This is starting to sound like John Spano and NHL Islanders, with bank fraud and everything. If this is fraud, I'm curious why they faked $440 mil, when the stadium investment was supposed to be 30-40 mil. Were they talking with the city about some much bigger deal, besides the stadium?
Yes, Spano is a swindler beyond reproach. He’s been sent to the big house two additional times since the Islanders fiasco for similar crimes, including earlier this year for dozens of counts of forgery. Being from the Buffalo area, reading that name reminded me of our own big phony from the past, a fellow named John Rigas. Five years after buying the Buffalo Sabres in 97, he completed a hat trick of bank, wire, and securities frauds. That got him a 15 year sentence, and a spot in the Time Magazine top 10 crooked CEOs list. Ah, memories! This Hartford story has captivated me; it’s been like a good murder mystery with new details gradually appearing to keep you guessing. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out. Some folks have got some ‘splaining to do Lucy! I’m curious myself at to where the $440 mil number came from. If I was worth that much, I sure wouldn’t be willing to state it publicly, much less have one bank transfer it to another in an electronic transmission. But maybe that's just me?
Well this is not good but hopefully a new ownership ownership group comes in with a better team name than Hartford City FC.
That would be great, but with the way this is ending I suspect it would be difficult to get anything going in Hartford anytime soon.
There is a great 30 for 30 about Spano. I was under the impression this sort of thing couldn't happen in todays world. Spano: "Could you believe it? I missed a zero on the cheque!" I guess even today if you fake enough money someone will get excited and overlook the details.
Sad situation but I am glad that NASL won't be getting into business with Duckett. We need more teams in the Northeast but not at any cost.
Hartford Hearts WFC (women FC) Tbh, the original developer's plan (the one who's now suing the city) made way more sense than this Duckett / Anderson plan. They wanted to build the stadium in stages, start with something small and make sure it's full, then expand if necessary. They wanted to bring in a women's top division team, which might've been a solid, cheaper option than NASL, especially considering 2015 and 2016 are women's world cup and Olympics summers. This Duckett / Anderson plan was to build a monstrosity that's way too big for men's 2nd / 3rd division soccer, but way too small for MLS. Then they'd bring a NASL team. Unless that team becomes another Indy Eleven / Sacramento Republic, you'd end up with a crappy team in a too big stadium with poor atmosphere. Plus these guys wanted the city to pay them 1 mil a year for managing the stadium even after it was built. Just a terrible plan, and Hartford clearly needs to be smarter about which politicians they elect next time.
NASL dodged a bullet here, the last thing they needed was involvement in another financial scandal. It's already hard to take them seriously and they'll probably get pushed out by USL sooner rather than later.
Why does it look bad for them? The city, not the league, was the one throwing the NASL name around. There's no evidence that the guy was even into the due diligence phase yet. And he certainly hadn't presented to the Board of Governors. If anything, this whole fiasco dissolving the way it did without the league saying word one about it is a good sign.
Wrong. This article (with quotes from Peterson) dates back earlier in the year, and I sure there are other articles referenced in this thread. http://www.courant.com/sports/hc-hartford-nasl-soccer-0428-20150427-story.html Duckett and his group were also 'throwing' the NASL name around publicly. Peterson and the league may not have mentioned him specifically, but based on the referenced article above and others, it's not hard to put two and two together. There was no due diligence phase, which was precisely the problem. The league had ongoing discussions with Duckett, didn’t do their homework any better than the Harford city council did, and just like the city council, they pulled back AFTER finding out he was a fraud with a criminal record. Again, the league did say words about it. It's a good sign in the respect that Chungachanga mentioned earlier, they "dodged a bullet".
You can just as easily use that article to make the opposite point. All Peterson says in that article is that Hartford would be a fantastic NASL market if done right. (He throws the if done right caveat in twice). Peterson describes the process an ownership would have to go through to present to the BOG for approval... A process Duckett never made it through. Did/does NASL want Hartford? No doubt. And they should. Clearly they never got beyond preliminary talks with this group. I would encourage them to talk to interested groups, especially ones with stadium plans before city councils. However the fact that Hartford didn't present at the BOG meetings in May or September is evidence enough that something didn't look right to NASL behind the scenes. So it's really a matter of perspective and your own biases. If you want this to be bad for NASL, you can interpret it mng146's way, if you don't you can interpret it my way. Either way I don't see how this can be considered worse than Virginia which was an announced franchise.
I agree with Oneeyedfool; The NASL BOG didn't revue or commit to a Hartford franchise. That this lug wanted in is not on them.
Let's not fool ourselves. If it wasn't for some of the slowly emerging shanningans of the potential Hartford owners coming to light, NASL was going to announce it. Fortunately they never officially announced it, which they did for OKC and VA but everyone in soccer circles knew they were destined for NASL. For example, the USSF are well aware of it.
Is it not possible that the NASL got wind of the shenanigans prior to everything going public which is why they hadn't announced Hartford yet? It would certainly explain why such a sure thing was never announced, went quiet for a while, and why there were reports that Hartford fell through prior to the shenanigans being revealed.
??? To the two dozen guys here or on Twitter who are insane enough to pay attention? Can't look all that bad when so few are paying attention in the first place.
That’s one way to look at it. A more plausible one is that they were waiting for final approval of the new stadium proposal. Can’t have a team without a stadium to put it in. If contracts were signed on the stadium deal, you can bet a league announcement of the franchise would have followed. The article I posted was dated 4/27. Last month, Duckett was stating publicly that he was involved in discussions with the NASL. Seems like quite a long time to be having “preliminary discussions”. Folks in Hartford were obviously aware of it through the media. How much they actually cared, who knows? It all amounts to nothing in the end for the league, but I don't see them walking away with clean hands from it.
Didn't stop them from announcing Miami FC. There was also a report last month that Hartford had fallen through. My idea is just as plausible as your idea. Then again I don't assume the NASL is run by a bunch of idiots who have never ran a successful business before. Meanwhile Duckett is proven to be a liar, so why would I believe anything he said?
Duckett said a lot of stuff... none of which has appeared to be true. So, his "in negotiations" translates into "Who is Bill Peterson?"
Indeed. Or something like that. I have been told that Peterson hadn't heard from the Hartford group in many moons, which probably made even him realize there was an issue there. And - in Peterson's defense - he really did not extoll the virtues of the potential ownership group, only the market. He was likely keeping his options open, which, if you're a salesman, you do. It's far, far, far from the most disingenuous thing Peterson's said in his tenure. No, not really. Virginia announced a team, hired people, showed off stadium renderings, set a start date, doubled down on said start date, and then disappeared. And the OKC drama, with the battle with USL, the owner jumping sides, the rumor (still unconfirmed) of foreign investment....that's probably the leader in the clubhouse. If you bought into the Hartford thing prematurely because ( a ) you're one of the group of people who finds teams that don't yet exist to be far more interesting than teams that do or ( b ) you believe every rumored soccer expansion market just because, that looks bad for you, not for the NASL. Or, even more plausible: the Hartford people didn't have the wherewithal to pull this off, which is why they didn't reach out to Peterson for months. Allegedly. Duh. You don't and can't know this.
And your evidence for this would be where? The fact remains -- Hartford was not one of the expansion bids presenting at the BOG meeting. There is no evidence that this was ever anywhere close to being announced. The only people who even knew about it either live in Hartford (and even most of them seem not to have cared) or frequent internet message boards with the express purpose of speculating about expansion. ... I'm not sure how acknowledging the existence of an ownership group is any sign of expansion. In the article you link, Peterson declines to comment on the ownership group, its composition, or even its viability. He has said as much about Chicago, Nashville, LA, San Diego, and other markets. Do those statements also make the league look bad? To quote: He then goes on to enumerate all the many things that need to occur before the team can even be considered for expansion by the BOG. Isn't that exactly what's supposed to happen? Why are you so certain there was no due diligence being done? Again, we have strong evidence that the group weren't even out of the first stage of expansion (which Peterson notes in the article), and the group was never even brought before the BOG. Both OKC and Virginia were brought before the board, which shows either that the league has adopted more rigorous vetting practices since then or that Hartford was still in early stages -- those are the only real options, and both are positive. And due dilligence or no, there's no possible way Duckett could have paid the expansion fee or posted the annual bond required by the USSF. So how precisely could this vaporware ever have gotten to the point where it made the NASL look bad? It was never announced.
So, I guess we are back to "If you build it... They will come" talk... Now I am bummed out... I see ads for the HFC indoor team around.. who owns that ?