Park City Ice Miners, a prominent Wasatch Back youth hockey organization, is accused of skirting financial reporting laws and refusing to provide members with records detailing its accounting operations.
Benjamin Arnold, who has three kids enrolled in Ice Miners programming, filed a lawsuit in Summit County’s Third District Court last month demanding the disclosure of the hockey nonprofit’s financial records.
Park City Ice Miners was established in 2007 and offers hockey lessons and competitive teams for kids under 18. The organization is associated with both USA Hockey and the Utah State Amateur Hockey Association, serving over 200 children. Its home rink is the Park City Ice Arena.
“PCIM is aware of the lawsuit filed against it and will work with its legal team to respond in a way that protects the best interests of our organization and its members,” the Park City Ice Miners Board of Directors said in a statement. “While PCIM cannot comment on the specifics of pending litigation, it can state that it considers the lawsuit an unnecessary escalation of a pattern of personal grievances of Mr. Arnold incongruous with PCIM’s mission of providing opportunity for youth hockey athletes.”
In an interview with The Park Record, Arnold said his concerns started when two new Board of Directors members — Laurel Durham and Vanessa Krejci — were denied access to routine budgetary information.
Arnold said Durham and Krejci started asking basic financial questions about the budget and operations, how money was being spent and how much coaches were being paid.
“They were basically told no and weren’t given it. They continued to ask … and they were ultimately just refused by who was in control of the finances,” Arnold said.
Arnold said he became personally invested in the organization’s accounting information when he and Krejci’s husband, Jim, started to explore the possibility of building a second ice rink. To flesh out the proposal, Arnold requested financial details and bank statements to piece together a presentation for investors who would be able to fund the $30 million project.
The Ice Miners board was receptive to the proposal during its June meeting. But Arnold claimed that board President Matthew Prucka refused to provide the documentation regardless of the board’s support. Meeting minutes detailing the board’s actions have not been publicly posted on the organization’s website since April.
Arnold argued in his legal complaint that Prucka was the “sole person in control” of the Park City Ice Miners’ financial accounts and reports to the Internal Revenue Service. Prucka has been on the Board of Directors since 2012, serving as treasurer before becoming president, and started filing with the IRS on the organization’s behalf in 2016, according to court documents.
Arnold said the civil complaint he filed in Third District Court last month is the final course of action available to him in his attempts to obtain the nonprofit’s financial records.
The lawsuit would compel the Ice Miners to release the information if a judge agrees, but Park City Ice Miners’ attorneys argue the organization is not obligated to provide the requested records.
“My concern is simple,” Arnold said. “An organization that serves 220 children and collects nearly half a million dollars annually needs proper financial oversight. That’s not radical. It’s basic nonprofit governance.”
As a registered nonprofit, Park City Ice Miners is required to disclose key financial information to the IRS on an annual basis. Those documents are considered public records, and Arnold said he noticed “numerous red flags” when he first reviewed the organization’s tax forms.
For example, Prucka’s personal Venmo account was being used to accept payments from families. Specifically, the Venmo transactions to Prucka’s account were omitted from disclosures, reportedly in violation of IRS regulations. The IRS mandates that a particular form be included in a nonprofit’s tax information if payments exceeding $10,000 annually are processed or moved through personal accounts.
The lawsuit alleged Prucka may have moved substantial amounts of the nonprofit’s money through his Venmo account each year, which has not been documented in filings with the IRS.
The Park City Ice Miners website now says the organization is no longer accepting Venmo payments for the 2025-26 season.
“The absence … raises serious compliance questions under IRS rules concerning potential private inurement and excess benefit transactions,” the complaint said.
Arnold also claimed Prucka has “exclusive control” of the Ice Miners bank accounts, accounting records and tax filings without oversight from an independent accountant or other board members. The organization also does not have any written policies regarding conflicts of interest, whistleblowers or document-retention practices.
Utah Code allows members of a nonprofit to “inspect and copy any of the records” outlined in the statute, including meeting minutes, accounting records and member information. Families enrolled in Ice Miners programming are considered members, as well as anyone who donates an annual $1 membership fee.
The lawsuit claimed the board refused to provide the documents to prevent revealing “the true extent of funds” flowing through Prucka’s accounts; potential violations of IRS disclosure requirements; potential private benefit or self-dealing issues; lack of proper internal controls and board oversight; and “other governance and financial management failures.”
Arnold submitted written requests to examine accounting records and tax filings on July 2, July 24 and Aug. 19.
The organization replied to the first request on July 15, providing Arnold with tax filings that were readily available on the IRS website as public records, according to court documents. The response did not include all of the requested documents, such as general ledgers, bank statements or Venmo reports.
Arnold then submitted his second letter in an attempt to gain access to the nonprofit’s financial information.
The Ice Miners’ legal counsel responded on Aug. 3, telling Arnold the organization would only provide him with a copy of the bylaws, names and addresses of current members, annual financial statements from 2022, 2023 and 2024 and board meeting minutes from 2025.
Specifically, the nonprofit’s attorneys said Park City Ice Miners was “not obligated to provide” the records and declined his request to inspect the documents.
Arnold filed his third request on Aug. 19, and the Ice Miners’ attorney said the information would be provided if Arnold agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement “promising not to discuss or disseminate the documents” to anyone else.
He refused, and the Ice Miners provided some documentation, but not “much of the basic financial information requested.” The financial information included “some QuickBooks ledgers, incomplete Venmo statements, illegible reconciliations that do not appear to be prepared in accordance with any accounting standards and Zions Bank statements,” according to the lawsuit.
“PCIM, however, continued to withhold Prucka’s personal bank account statements, even though PCIM accounting records that were provided show that large sums of PCIM funds were transferred in and out of Prucka’s personal bank accounts, apparently with no financial oversight or controls,” the complaint said.
Arnold also alleged the Venmo records he was provided were “altered” and “incomplete,” saying the documents “appeared to have been manually created or modified to resemble standard Venmo transaction records, rather than being authentic account statements or transaction histories directly exported from Venmo.”
The records reportedly did not include complete transaction details, beginning and ending balances or information on the “destination account” for withdrawals, but Arnold said the pieces of information that have been provided are already raising too many concerns.
“The accounting records … confirm that Prucka held PCIM monies in his personal possession for many months at a time, routed substantial PCIM funds through personal accounts, reimbursed himself from PCIM’s bank accounts by, among other things, writing checks to himself from a PCIM account, used a personal credit card for PCIM expenses and filed IRS Form 990s that appear to omit significant transactions,” the lawsuit said.
The Board of Directors sent a letter on Aug. 6 to other Ice Miners families, characterizing Arnold’s requests as attempts to access “sensitive information of the organization, including your personally identifiable information.” The complaint said that had “a chilling effect on other members who might have otherwise supported Arnold’s efforts to obtain financial transparency or make their own statutory requests for information.”
“The systematic refusal to provide basic financial records to members exercising their statutory rights is inconsistent with the operation of a properly governed 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and undermines the trust of the member families who support PCIM,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit concluded by requesting that Summit County Third District Judge Matthew Bates compel Park City Ice Miners to release the records to Arnold in addition to covering his attorney’s fees.
“I want PCIM to thrive,” Arnold said. “Proper governance and financial transparency aren’t obstacles to that goal. They’re essential to it.”