A father and son team pleaded guilty to securities fraud and aggravated identity theft in connection with their scheme to defraud investors of more than $280 million in two municipal bond offerings tied to the construction of the 320-acre Legacy Park sports complex in Mesa, Arizona.
Randy Miller was the chairman and president of Legacy Sports, which owned and operated the venue, and his son Chad Miller was the company’s former CEO. According to the charges brought against them, the Millers and their collaborators scammed potential bond investors between November 2019 and May 2023 with forged and altered purported “binding” letters of intent and other documents claiming to be from sports organizations including the British soccer team Manchester United and Major League Soccer’s Real Salt Lake.
The fake documents, which gave the false impression the teams were committing to holding many events at Legacy Park, were presented to prospective bond investors as evidence Legacy Park would be 100% occupied at opening and would generate nearly $100 million in revenue in its first year of operations, more than enough to cover the bond payments.
After the Legacy Park bonds were sold to investors, the Millers used some of the proceeds for personal expenses; they also paid themselves inflated salaries and withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars in addition to their salaries.
Legacy Park opened in January 2022, but within months it failed to generate enough revenue to make the monthly bond payments. The venue was in default by October 2022 and filed for bankruptcy in May 2023. It was later sold for less than $26 million, with less than $2.5 million used to repay the approximately $284 million owed to Legacy Park bondholders.
The Millers pleaded guilty to one count of securities offering fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and one count of aggravated identity theft, which carries a mandatory consecutive sentence of two years in prison. As part of their guilty pleas, money judgments in the amounts of $7.28 million and $4.79 million were entered against Rand and Chad Miller, respectively.
