Key Takeaways
- Emmitt Smith and his business partners secured a $2.5 million loan from Kituwah LLC for a Texas solar farm, but Kituwah alleges they diverted the money to repay an earlier investor.
- Kituwah says the defendants sold Project Exodus through a “steady stream of lies” and operated “essentially, like a Ponzi scheme,” leaving the company with no repayment and an outstanding balance above $3 million.
- The lawsuit accuses the Cowboys legend and his co-defendants of fraudulent inducement, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract, while their representatives have not commented.
Dallas Cowboys legend Emmitt Smith is accused of helping divert $2.5 million from a Native American-owned investment company to pay another investor—money that was allegedly supposed to finance a Texas solar project.
According to court documents obtained by Front Office Sports, Kituwah LLC, the investment and economic development arm of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, made the allegations in Delaware Chancery Court on Monday, August 31. The company claims Smith, longtime business partner David Mosley, and their commercial real estate company, 4 13 Solutions Inc., secured the $2.5 million loan for a planned solar farm called Project Exodus.
Instead, the suit alleges, the money was secretly earmarked to “improperly pay” Wilson Holdings, another company that had previously invested with Smith and his partners.
Kituwah claims it was sold on Project Exodus through a “steady stream of lies.” According to the complaint, the company was told it would become a partner in the solar farm, that the U.S. Department of Energy would eventually provide permanent financing and that the project would be “up and running” by the end of 2024.
Kituwah also alleges that the defendants used “false projections and data” and overstated interest from other potential investors. The $2.5 million, it says, was supposed to come back “in a matter of months.”
It never did. The loan came due on February 1, 2024, and Kituwah says it has “not recovered a penny.” After its attempts to collect allegedly yielded no results, the company launched an investigation into what happened to its money.
That investigation, according to the lawsuit, uncovered conduct Kituwah described as “essentially, like a Ponzi scheme”—with its investment allegedly used to satisfy an obligation to an earlier investor rather than to the solar project it had agreed to fund.
“Kituwah poured substantial time, efforts, and resources in the purported joint venture,” the lawsuit states. “Not only has Kituwah not seen any returns on its investment,” the company alleges, but it has incurred additional expenses simply trying to determine where the money went.
Kituwah also claims it has seen no evidence that Project Exodus has made “any meaningful progress towards completion.” Nearly $600,000 in interest has allegedly accumulated, bringing the outstanding balance above $3 million.
Kituwah is asserting six causes of action against Smith and his co-defendants, including fraudulent inducement, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of contract. It is seeking at least $2.5 million, interest, attorneys’ fees, and additional damages.
The company says it even offered to waive the accumulated interest if the principal was repaid by August 31, 2025, but that attempt to resolve the dispute was “effectively ignored.”
Representatives for Smith and the other defendants could not immediately be reached for comment.
The lawsuit puts Smith’s extensive business career under scrutiny decades after he became one of the biggest names in Dallas Cowboys history. The Hall of Fame running back won three Super Bowls with Dallas and remains the NFL’s career leader with 18,355 rushing yards and 164 rushing touchdowns.
