Pro Football Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith is accused in a new lawsuit of helping induce a Native American economic-development company to put $2.5 million into a Texas solar project that never repaid the money and, the investor says, never meaningfully moved forward via Front Office Sports.
The complaint, filed Monday in Delaware’s Court of Chancery, comes from Kituwah Energy Project #2 LLC, an affiliate of Kituwah LLC, the tribally owned investment arm of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. It names Smith; his longtime business partner, David Mosley; their Dallas-based company, 4 13 Solutions Inc.; minority partner Darrel Wilson; Wilson Holdings of North America LLC; and the joint-venture company they formed, Jabez 4 10 LLC.
The filing does not prove wrongdoing. It is a set of civil allegations that the defendants have not answered in court. Representatives for 4 13 Solutions could not immediately be reached, according to multiple reports published after the suit was filed.
According to the complaint, Smith and Mosley approached Kituwah in early 2023 about co-investing in a planned solar farm they called Project Exodus. The pitch, the suit says, was that Genesis Consolidated Industries was buying Texas land for the project but lacked capital, and that a joint venture could take over the deal, secure permanent financing from the U.S. Department of Energy and have the farm “up and running” by the end of 2024.
Kituwah says it was shown “false projections and data,” including first-year net income figures of more than $13 million, and was told other investors were lined up. Repayment, the complaint says, was promised in a matter of months.
In September 2023, the parties formed Jabez 4 10 LLC. Kituwah took a majority of the Class A units. 4 13 Solutions and Wilson Holdings took smaller stakes. Smith and Mosley were appointed managers. That same day, Kituwah Energy Project #2 issued a $2.5 million secured promissory note to the joint venture at 12% interest, due Feb. 1, 2024. The money, Kituwah says it was told, would be used to acquire the land-purchase rights and project interests.
The loan came due and was not repaid, the suit says. Kituwah says it has “not recovered a penny,” has been shut out of managing the venture and has no visibility into the company’s finances. It also says it has seen no evidence of “any meaningful progress towards completion” of Project Exodus and that no DOE loan or substitute private financing was obtained.
The core of the fraud claim is not only that the project stalled. Kituwah says an investigation later found the $2.5 million was used to pay Wilson Holdings for money that company had previously put into Smith and Mosley’s ventures — a payment the complaint says was not disclosed and was not supposed to happen unless permanent project financing closed.
The suit calls that structure “essentially, like a Ponzi scheme”: new investor money used to satisfy an earlier partner rather than to buy the solar-farm interest that had been promised.
“Despite being present on multiple calls where Kituwah asked repeated questions about the [loan and joint venture agreement], neither the principals of 4 13 Solutions nor Wilson Holdings disclosed how the loan proceeds … had really been used,” the complaint states. “Their lack of disclosure is telling and only further confirms 4 13 Solution’s fraudulent intent and the wrongful nature of the payment.”
The complaint quotes Wilson as later saying he “did not believe any permanent financing had been received” and was “not sure what triggered this repayment.”
Interest has continued to run. By Aug. 31, 2025, Kituwah calculated about $598,836 in accrued interest, bringing the claimed balance to roughly $3.1 million. The tribe’s affiliate says it offered last year to waive default interest if the principal was repaid under a forbearance deal. Those drafts, like earlier demand letters in 2024 and 2025, were “effectively ignored,” the suit says. Smith and Mosley, it alleges, offered shifting excuses — including a July 2024 email from Mosley about an imminent third-party deal — then stopped participating in scheduled calls.
