Former Vail Councilman Greg Moffet Faces Felony Theft Charges Over $63K Escrow Dispute

The fluorescent lights in the Eagle County courtroom hum with a low, persistent buzz that seems to vibrate right through the floorboards. It’s 5:15 p.m. on a Friday, and attorney Rick Kornfeld is just getting started with his jury selection, apologizing to the room for the delay. Potential jurors, who arrived at 8:30 a.m. sharp, have been waiting hours to determine if former Vail Councilman Greg Moffet stole from the town or if this is just a messy civil dispute turned criminal.

If the rest of the trial mirrors the fatigue of jury selection, this could be a long week for the twelve people tasked with untangling the financial knots of Tiga Advertising. Moffet faces felony theft and embezzlement charges, accused of pulling nearly $63,000 from an escrow account meant to hold funds owed to Vail after his company declared bankruptcy.

Here’s the thing though: the town says he took the money. Moffet says it was his.

The core of the dispute lies in a contract that once put Tiga Advertising in charge of managing advertisements inside Vail’s buses and parking facilities. It was a straightforward arrangement, until the payments stopped. The town claims Tiga owed them $125,000 or more. Moffet insists the debt was closer to $62,500. The difference isn't just academic; it’s the difference between a minor accounting error and a felony.

Prosecuting attorney Henry Solano argues that the town’s internal squabbles don’t negate the criminal charge. “I am not aware of any district attorney or any district attorney’s office that forfeits their right to make an independent determination on whether or whether to file criminal charges,” Solano said, dismissing Moffet’s claim that the town simply walked the complaint down the hall to the police without doing its own investigation.

Moffet’s team, led by Kornfeld, has been busy chipping away at that certainty. They’ve been asking jurors a simple question: does owing money mean you’ve committed a crime? Most have said no. They’ve asked if being late on a bill is a crime. The answer is almost always no.

The jury pool has been vetted for bias, for financial literacy, and for how they view government workers. One potential juror with a finance background was singled out to explain when a loan becomes a crime versus when it’s just a loan. The goal is to see if the jurors can separate the civil dispute over the size of the debt from the criminal act of taking money from the escrow account.

Moffet, who pleaded not guilty, has been watching this play out for years. The civil litigation started in late 2020. The criminal charges followed a dispute over how funds were being spent from that same escrow account under bankruptcy court supervision. It’s a complex web of contracts, bankruptcy filings, and accusations that has kept the former councilman in the spotlight long after his time on the council ended.

Not exactly a clear-cut case of a man running out with a bag of cash. It’s a dispute over who owns what, fought in two different court systems, with the criminal trial serving as the final arbiter.

As the sun sets over the Eagle Valley, the jurors are still in there, weighing whether the money taken was theft or just payment for services rendered. The town of Vail is waiting to see if they can prove the theft. Moffet is waiting to see if they can prove he didn’t.

The gavel hasn’t fallen yet, but the tension in the room is thick enough to cut.