University to pay $480K to remove convicted embezzler's name from stadium scoreboard
In 2009, using money swindled from investors in a Ponzi scheme, a former football star at California Polytechnic State University paid $625,000 to put his name on a scoreboard at the school’s Alex G. Spanos Stadium, prosecutors said.
Following Al Moriarty’s conviction in a $22 million swindle that victimized a number of fellow alumni, officials at Cal Poly were eager to remove “Moriarty Enterprises” from the scoreboard. But that didn’t prove to be easy, according to KSBY and an earlier San Luis Obispo Tribune story.
The naming rights were part of a contract whose terms weren’t entirely clear, according to a bankruptcy trustee put in charge of the company’s assets. And, both under a contract theory and because of the source of the funds, the trustee said, Cal Poly would have to pay the bankruptcy estate to remove the Moriarty name from the scoreboard.
Although the university argued that Moriarty’s conviction breached an implied term of the donation contract, a judge agreed with the trustee.
Now Cal Poly has OK’d a settlement agreement that provides for the university to pay $480,000 to the bankruptcy estate, in exchange for permission to remove the Moriarty name, KSBY reports. No tuition funds will be used to pay the trustee, Cal Poly says.
The settlement must still be OK’d by a judge in the Washington state bankruptcy case before it is final, the San Luis Obispo Tribune reports.
“It has been a priority to resolve this matter amicably and to remove the Moriarty name from the scoreboard, which has served as a painful reminder to Mr. Moriarty’s victims and to the campus community,” said Cal Poly in a written statement. “The settlement brings closure to a difficult situation and reestablishes the university’s control over the scoreboard.”
