In the days before his Ford Bronco drifted into the path of an oncoming semi-truck, Matt Miller was settling debts.
Miller, 43, has worked for ESPN since 2021, becoming a key figure in the network’s NFL Draft coverage. A self-described “bad” high school football player from Liberal, Mo., he had landed one of the most coveted jobs in sports media, cultivating a brand that included a range of charitable endeavors: coat drives for children in need, scholarships for students of color, and supplies for teachers. He was, as one friend called him, a “local hero.”
But over the past two months, that image of Miller began to crack. Dozens of social media posts accused him of stiffing the winners of fantasy football leagues he ran, leagues he billed as benefiting charities. Commenters also questioned the legitimacy of the charity fundraisers he routinely held. The public outcry prompted an investigation by the Missouri Attorney General’s Office, which has received more than two dozen complaints.
Miller hosted 91 fantasy football leagues in 2025 on Sleeper, a fantasy sports platform, according to various league manager search tools. Based on the standard entry fee and league size, that would have given Miller access to around $100,000 in entry fees for the 2025 season. In an email to The Athletic on Thursday, Miller said that number did “not seem accurate,” but he couldn’t verify because he does not have access to his Sleeper account. In the same email, Miller said due to the active investigation, his attorney advised him to limit his responses, but said “anyone with a legitimate claim to winnings should please contact me immediately.”
Sleeper banned Miller on May 7 for “stealing buy-ins from managers and not paying out league winners,” according to messages Sleeper’s customer support sent to The Athletic. The Athletic spoke with a dozen people who said Miller failed to deliver on his promises, dating from 2017. Nine said league members received money they were owed only after badgering him directly, including threatening to expose him publicly or report him to his employer, and even then, some received only partial winnings.
“He’s offered zero proof that any of (the money collected from the leagues) has gone to charity,” said a member of one of Miller’s 2025 leagues who filed a complaint with the Missouri Attorney General’s Office. The person requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
Miller declined to provide documentation of donations or comment about whether all of the money he said would go to charity made its way there.
After complaints reached ESPN directly, and as public criticism amplified in May and June, Miller began paying people back. Then, on June 17, just before 4 p.m., Miller drifted over the double yellow dividing line of two-lane Missouri Route 96 and smashed into a semi-truck. The force of the crash sheared the seatbelt Miller was wearing, and he was thrown from the vehicle. He was airlifted to the hospital, where he underwent life-saving operations that he said included the amputation of his left arm.
On June 25, Miller’s X account shared a link to a GoFundMe page to raise money for his recovery, and the responses included both wishes for a speedy return to health — and suggestions that it was his latest ruse. The GoFundMe campaign exceeded $51,000 from hundreds of donations before Miller’s family paused it July 3. In his email, Miller said the funds likely would be used to help cover a prosthetic, as well as provide his parents and girlfriend financial relief while they help care for him during his lengthy recovery.
The Missouri Attorney General’s Office launched its investigation into Miller’s charity activity on July 2. By Wednesday of this week, the attorney general’s office said it had received 26 complaints regarding Miller. Those complaints were made by people who had paid for camps and participated in fantasy football leagues where no product or minimal product was delivered, according to the attorney general’s office. Miller’s GoFundMe is not part of the investigation, the office said.
“We need consumers who believe that they may have been misled or defrauded by this charity or any other charity to contact our office with information,” said Colbey Stosberg, a spokesperson for the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.
In a statement, ESPN said, “As he announced, Matt is on a mutually agreed-upon leave.” The company is aware of the allegations against him, including the Missouri attorney general’s investigation, and plans to address them with Miller at an appropriate time, according to a person at ESPN who was not authorized to speak publicly.
“Because this is an active investigation, I’ve been told by legal counsel to limit my response,” Miller said in an email. “However, I’ve tried reaching out to all the winners from the last season to make sure they’ve been paid. My [direct messages] on all social media remain open for winners to contact me. Because of my limited access to my original email account, I have had trouble authenticating winners, but everyone who finished in first, second or third place will be paid out and I’ve worked hard to make that happen.”
While recovering from his accident, as allegations and speculation swirl around him, Miller shared medical updates on social media, including an X post on June 29, his birthday. “Excited to see what the hardest year of life brings,” Miller wrote.
Miller was a regular presence during ESPN’s coverage of the latter rounds of the NFL Draft. Aaron M. Sprecher / Associated Press
For more than a decade, Miller steadily ascended in the niche world of NFL Draft media. He wrote for Bleacher Report from 2010 through 2021, building an extensive social media following under the handle NFLDraftScout. ESPN hired Miller as a contributor in 2021, praising his charitable work for children in Southwest Missouri, according to a news release at the time. He became a year-round draft analyst the next year. Miller served as a live panelist during the latter rounds of the draft starting in 2023. The company announced in March 2025 it re-signed Miller to a multi-year contract.
Since 2017, Miller’s posts about players and prospects, primarily on X, have been increasingly interspersed with calls for followers to donate to charitable campaigns. Those have included online scouting classes and golf tournaments, auctions to buy coats for kids and raffles through his foundation in which a donor is said to be entered to win merchandise, such as a copy of the Madden video game, a signed Patrick Mahomes jersey or a PS5. In many of the posts, Miller directed payments to a mixture of PayPal, Venmo and Cash App accounts that were either personal or named for one of his charities, as opposed to a centralized donation page.
Miller also advertised a charitable component of his fantasy football leagues, telling members that their buy-ins benefited a particular foundation. Over the years, he primarily promoted two organizations: the 417 Foundation, which Miller said he created to provide clothes and food to children in need around Southwest Missouri, and the 15 Percent Foundation, created by Miller’s mother to feed people in the Liberal, Mo., area facing food insecurity.
In 2020, Miller solicited donations to the 417 Foundation for scholarships he said would be awarded to students of color in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. According to a write-up in the student newspaper at Missouri State University, Miller said he kicked in $5,000, and after posting on social media, he received enough donations to offer 25 scholarships for $1,000 each.
A Missouri State professor who showed interest in the scholarship program in 2020 said she had forgotten about the program and was not certain if any of her students applied. The Athletic could not find any record online of students who received a scholarship.
In response to a specific question about the scholarships, Miller said, “Because this is an active investigation, I’ve been told by legal counsel to respectfully not respond.”
The 417 Foundation, which was named after the area code in southwestern Missouri, was registered as a nonprofit in the state of Missouri in December 2018. A year later, the Secretary of State revoked its nonprofit status for failing to file a registration report, meaning the foundation no longer could operate as a nonprofit charity in Missouri. That status also meant it was barred from conducting raffles in the state.
In his email, Miller declined to comment on the legality of the raffles he held.
In 2019, Miller registered the 417 Foundation instead as a business, which was in good standing through 2024.
The foundation’s website is no longer active, but in 2019, it said its goal was to “ensure every child has food, clothes and the supplies needed to excel daily.”
In 2019, Miller posted about the formation of the “first annual 417 Foundation fantasy football leagues,” which included a $1,000 buy-in for the highest-tiered “platinum league.” League winners would receive a refund of their buy-in, an NFL jersey and helmet of their choice, scouting classes with Miller and a copy of Madden 20, according to the post.
In his 2025 fantasy leagues, Miller identified the “15 Percent Foundation” as the beneficiary. Miller’s mother in 2019 registered a charitable organization with the state of Missouri under the name “The fifteen percent corp.” She did not respond to multiple messages from The Athletic. The registration filing said assets would be “used to purchase food and food service equipment only.” Miller was listed as the organization’s secretary in a 2025 registration report.
The Fifteen Percent Corp. was registered with the IRS as a charity in 2019 and every year since has reported gross receipts of less than $50,000. That monetary threshold means the organization does not have to file more detailed annual financial reports.
Multiple participants in Miller’s 2025 fantasy leagues said he never provided any proof of donations. Miller often directed league payments — typically a $100 buy-in — to his personal Venmo or Cash App accounts. When reflecting on the season, the participants noted that Miller did not use LeagueSafe, a fantasy platform with its own third-party payment system.
The use of his personal Venmo account to collect funds, combined with the inconsistent manner in which he promoted the charitable aspect of leagues, created a concerning lack of clarity and accountability, CharityWatch CEO Laurie Styron said.
“The mere fact that it’s so unclear is problematic in and of itself,” Styron said. “If people were basing their decision of whether or not to participate on the fact that you asserted that the money was going to charity, then you may have misled them about how their money would be used. Whether or not the letter of the law was being followed, that’s definitely unethical.”
Miller’s reputation began to fray earlier this year. Andy Sunday, a 41-year-old from Pittsburgh, had paid a $100 entry fee and joined the 23 Draft Scout Dynasty league for the 2025 season on Sleeper. An avid fantasy player who plays in three or four leagues per year, Sunday had noticed a pattern of Miller actively promoting registrations for leagues and then failing to engage in league matters.
“But I was excited to join a league with a cat from ESPN that I followed from my early Twitter days,” Sunday said. “… A public figure advertising these leagues via their verified account made me feel like it was good.”
After car accident, ESPN analyst Matt Miller’s reputation unravels
Alex Andrejev and Jorge Ribas
During the season, the league chat became “a breeding ground” for promoting new, midseason leagues and other promotions, Sunday said. One screenshot shows Miller promoting a raffle for a $425 Yeti cooler with an NFL team logo of the winner’s choice. Digital tickets could be purchased for $5 on a Stripe payment link he included. Participants from other leagues shared similar experiences of Miller engaging only to solicit payments.
Miller often touted giveaways or raffles for Yeti coolers and other Yeti products. Several people who won those prizes, both in interviews and in online comments, said Miller never delivered them.
A Yeti spokesperson said the company has no business relationships or partnerships with Miller, but Yeti has accommodated requests from Miller and other ESPN employees who asked for products, either for charitable donation or personal use.
“Some were donated, but others were purchased using the buy-ins and were included as part of the prizes,” Miller said.
Miller said he ordered the Yeti products after the NFL Draft. He said some were shipped to winners just before his car accident and plans to send others have been delayed by his extended hospital stay. “But those will be sent as soon as I’m able,” Miller said.
At football season’s end, winners in Miller’s various leagues expected to be paid. One of them in a 2025 league, a lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of retaliation, still hadn’t received his second-place payout by March and wanted to know what happened. (Miller typically promised payouts of $250 and a “Yeti bundle” to first-place finishers, $200 and a Yeti Rambler to second place, and $100 to third place.)
“On the [league] message board, we’re talking about it like ‘What’s going on? This is really weird. He’s like radio silence,’” the lawyer said.
The lawyer emailed Miller and an ESPN publicist and told them he would notify ESPN’s general counsel if he didn’t receive a response. He also said one of his next steps would be “to blast out on various social media platforms to every analyst and content creator in the fantasy football space that I can think of in order to advise them to beware of this possible scam by Mr. Miller,” the lawyer wrote in the email to Miller and the ESPN publicist, which he shared with The Athletic.
Miller refunded the lawyer his entry fees less than two hours later, including an extra $200 he had paid for future leagues, but not his winnings.
“The only reason I joined this league was because it was Matt Miller from ESPN,” the lawyer said. “You’d never Venmo somebody you didn’t know $100 to join a fantasy league, but he advertises through his official ESPN account, which made it seem like, ‘Okay, this has gotta be legit.’”
Another participant in one of Miller’s 2025 leagues began to have doubts that Miller was really the one behind the account. J. Mamana, a manager of multiple dynasty leagues himself, noticed Miller’s lack of engagement during the season, solicitations to donate to vague charitable efforts and failure to pay league winners at season’s end. On May 7, after months of following up about payouts and threatening to report Miller’s account, Mamana emailed Sleeper’s customer support a detailed report of Miller’s activity in the league, including screenshots.
“He is obviously a scam artist impersonating a wealthy ESPN analyst on Bluesky and exploiting ‘charity’ dynasty leagues to solicit large buy-ins in order to profit,” Mamana wrote in the email to Sleeper, viewed by The Athletic. “Or it’s actually Matt Miller and he is simply himself a scam artist exploiting his ‘charity’ work to steal money from Dynasty managers. This account must be investigated.”
An hour later, Sleeper’s customer support replied to Mamana that it had banned Miller’s account from the platform.
Sunday, the Pittsburgh player, won his league last year. Months later, Miller still hadn’t sent his winnings. On May 21, under his handle ScroogeMcPanda, Sunday started a Reddit thread titled “Matt Miller Leagues and Scam,” asking members of the r/DynastyFF group whether anyone in Miller’s leagues had won and not been paid out.
“I posted the Reddit mainly to see if I was crazy or an idiot,” Sunday said in a text message. “And there’s a lot of us.”
One of them was the lawyer. A friend texted him the Reddit thread. “Oh,” he recalled thinking. “This wasn’t a one-off.” The stakes weren’t just a couple thousand dollars, he realized; other winners in other leagues were experiencing the same issues. The lawyer emailed ESPN’s general counsel May 22.
As of Thursday afternoon, Sunday’s thread had received 208 replies. Many detailed experiences similar to Sunday’s.
On the same day that Sunday started his Reddit thread, Miller posted a photo on his Instagram feed of himself pouring a drink behind the bar at the Joplin-based 122 Lounge, which he bought with a partner at the end of last year.
“Was this bar funded with dynasty sleeper league dues?” Sunday replied with his scroogemcpanda handle.
The comment prompted Miller to send Sunday a direct message. Miller told him, “I can’t get into Sleeper” and said he also had lost access to his email, Venmo and Bluesky accounts. He said he had been trying to contact league winners “but it’s been a mess once my password was stolen.”
On June 7, screenshots show, Sunday told Miller he’d reached out to Sleeper and had learned “you were running scams and had been banned off the platform.” Sunday said he’d seen no evidence of entry fees donated to charity. “How are you going to rectify this for not only me, but every other of your impacted leagues?”
In response, Miller didn’t address his charity efforts. He claimed everyone had been paid and told Sunday he could send him a Venmo request to receive his winnings. Sunday didn’t reply immediately. On June 16, Miller sent another message asking Sunday where to send him his winnings. Sunday replied with his Venmo account.
The next day, June 17, at 11:34 a.m., Miller messaged Sunday again to tell him he should have the money in his account. Sunday confirmed he received the payment.
Just a few hours later, shortly after Miller said he dropped off his son after a day at the arcade, Miller was driving his blue 2023 Ford Bronco east on Missouri Route 96.
At 3:50 p.m., a green and white semi-truck rumbled west on the other side of the straight road. As Miller’s car descended a gentle hill, he drifted into the other lane.
“I jerked the truck to the right to try and avoid him,” the 28-year-old truck driver later told Missouri Highway Patrol investigators. “But he hit the front driver’s side of my truck.”
Miller’s 2023 Ford Bronco was destroyed in the collision. Courtesy of Missouri State Highway Patrol
The truck driver was not injured, according to the accident report.
Miller’s car tore a hole in the front of the semi-truck’s trailer and skidded off the side of the road. Miller said he has no recollection of the roughly 10 minutes preceding the collision.
“I haven’t ever seen a car explode like that,” a witness traveling behind Miller told investigators. “I ran to the Bronco and there was no one in the vehicle. I heard groaning behind me. I saw a man laying in the grass. I called 911.”
Missouri State Highway Patrol investigators later noted in their report that it was unknown whether Miller was distracted or under the influence of alcohol or marijuana. Miller said bloodwork could confirm he was not under the influence, and he also said he was not using his phone.
Emergency responders airlifted Miller to Mercy Hospital in Joplin. According to social media posts later made on his account, Miller underwent a battery of medical procedures: a life-saving amputation of his left arm, reconstructive surgery in hopes of supporting a prosthetic arm, brachial surgery, operations to repair a compound femur and a shattered patella, the harvesting of nerves around his shoulder and 50 units of blood pumped through his body.
On June 25, two days after he publicly revealed his accident, Miller shared the GoFundMe account. Some of ESPN’s biggest stars promoted it; Mel Kiper Jr. donated $1,000. The account’s original goal was quickly surpassed.
In his email, Miller said his recovery is expected to take 12 to 18 months. During that time, he said, he will be unable to be alone, drive and perform many daily tasks. Miller said his doctors have told him his healthcare will only partially cover the costs of his prosthetic arm, and he likely will use the GoFundMe donations to pay for the rest.
When Miller’s family posted the call for donations, backlash rapidly overtook support. The Reddit thread full of allegations, previously sequestered to fantasy football chatrooms, spread on social media and broke into the mainstream. The comments under Miller’s social media posts grew startlingly vitriolic. The sports media website Awful Announcing wrote about the allegations July 1, fueling more interest.
Kevin Smith, Miller’s friend and the owner of a Joplin tattoo shop, said he spoke over the phone with Miller on June 30 about what he could remember about the accident.
“He’s like, ‘I wasn’t distracted. I lost control of my car. I don’t know what happened,’” Smith said.
Smith didn’t broach the allegations with Miller, not wanting to add stress. He said he sensed Miller keeping up his morale. About six months ago, Smith said, he gave Miller and a then-girlfriend matching tattoos that covered their left hands and wrists.
“He was like, ‘Well, I’m going to have to get a new hand tattoo. And thankfully it’s not going to match my ex-girlfriend’s.’” Smith said. “That’s the type of spirit he is — a jokester.”
In the aftermath of the past NFL season, many of those who played in Miller’s leagues formed something of a community.
Screenshots from league chats show exchanges between members discussing the many unanswered messages they sent to Miller, as the tone of the chats shifts from confusion to frustration to skepticism of the purported charity donations.
“Season is over. No word from Matt. If this was just some guy I’d be freaking the f— out,” wrote Geoff Button, a first-place finisher, in one league chat.
Others in that chat chimed in, tagging Miller in subsequent messages. They discussed the various platforms where they contacted him — Bluesky, Instagram, email. One member of that league, the same person who filed a complaint with the attorney general’s office, communicated via Instagram DM with Miller, who said his Sleeper account was hacked, according to screenshots. That member sent Miller the Venmo handles of the top finishers and coordinated sending their addresses to receive the Yeti merchandise.
“This is amazing. Thank you. I’ll send asap when I’m off camera,” Miller wrote on Feb. 12.
Two days later, the same member followed up to say the winners still didn’t get their payments and to express concern about payments made for future seasons.
“Just been slammed with work. Thanks for the reminder,” Miller wrote back.
On Feb. 15, the member again messaged Miller on Instagram, saying in part, “I really want you to not be a scammer. This is starting to hurt your reputation.”
A few hours later, Miller replied: “All sent. Thanks again for your help.” Winners confirmed in their league chat that they received the payouts, though Button and the second-place finisher said in phone interviews they never received the promised Yeti merchandise.
Several of those who hounded Miller for payouts have formed new leagues to play together during this upcoming season. As one put it: “Well, we’ll make some lemonade out of lemons.”
Sunday, who started the Reddit thread back in May, has joined one of those leagues composed of Miller detractors, but he didn’t stop there.
This week, he joined the more than two dozen others in filing a complaint against Miller with the Missouri attorney general.
