Report: Vikings owner Zygi Wilf committed fraud, breach of contract

A lengthy lawsuit involving Zygi Wilf found the Vikings owner to have committed fraud. (Bob Levey/Getty Images)

Minnesota Vikings owner Zygi Wilf and two other family members committed fraud, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty and also violated the state’s civil racketeering statute, New Jersey Judge Deanne Wilson said Monday in a decision that finally wraps up a 21-year lawsuit.

From the New Jersey Star-Ledger:

When all is said and done, it appears that Zygmunt “Zygi” Wilf, multi-millionaire leader of his family’s Short Hills-based real estate empire and principal owner of the Vikings, will wind up at the losing end of the long-running case.

“To my knowledge, there has never been a case like this in New Jersey jurisprudence,” said Wilson, who delayed her retirement to hear the case to its conclusion. “We try to move cases along. There is no reason in the world for a case to be tried 20 years after it was filed.”

The Wilfs’ business partners claimed family members systematically cheated them out of their fair share of revenues from Rachel Gardens, a 764-unit apartment complex in Montville, by running what amounted to “organized-crime-type activities” in their bookkeeping practices that gave the Wilfs a disproportionate share of the income.