Muni Bond Blowup Exposes Flaws in $600 Billion Corner of Market
- Sports complex went bust less than three years after debt sale
- Little vetting by agency with history of rubber-stamping deals
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The red flags were flying all around Randy Miller. He’d already had bouts with bankruptcy. He’d been accused — not once, but three times — of defrauding business associates. He pointed to a partnership with international soccer powerhouse Manchester United, even though the other ties to professional teams he cited were over three decades old.
But when the 68-year-old businessman and his son turned to Wall Street in 2020 and 2021 for money to build a sprawling youth-sports complex in the Sonoran Desert outside of Phoenix — after repeatedly failing to drum up enough financing on his own — it not only obliged, but lent him $280 million to do so.