Rosette defends 'secret' payments

Former Plain Green online lending company executive Neal Rosette Sr. — who has a lawsuit against the Chippewa Cree Tribe and Plain Green and other companies pending in tribal court — said he has another side of the story regarding an arbitration award. An arbitrator in the dispute ordered Nevada-based Encore Services LLC pay the tribe $1.1 million it had paid to Rosette and fellow Plain Green executive Billi Anne Morsette.

Rosette told the Havre Daily News Tuesday that the information released by the tribe had been “concocted” by the tribal government and their attorneys to discredit him.

“It’s no coincidence that the timing of their press release coincides with the upcoming court date on the civil suit that I filed in Tribal Court,” he said in a prepared statement later emailed to the Havre Daily News.

Rosette and Morsette each received 2.5 percent of the company's revenues from 2011 to 2013. The payments were made through Encore Services in such a way as to conceal them from the rest of the tribe, an arbitrator ruled in July.

Encore was ordered to repay the tribe more than $1.1 million that was passed on to Rosette and Morsette. That arbitration award, which was included in a federal lawsuit filed by the tribe against Encore this month, also revealed that former tribal health director and Rocky Boy psychologist James Eastlick Jr. was paid 2 percent of Plain Green's revenues because of the influence he had in the tribal community.

Rosette said he and Morsette did not ask for the payments. Plain Green's board of directors offered to pay them 5 percent of revenues because Rosette and Morsette had started a consulting business that the board feared would allow other tribes to open their own lending companies and compete with Plain Green's business.

Rosette compared it to retention plans offered to executives in the corporate world and said he thought he would receive much less than he did.

But Plain Green was a booming success. The company charges online borrowers annualized interest rates of up to 379 percent, and the tribe's status as a sovereign nation allows it to ignore a Montana law that caps interest rates of 36 percent.

In an agreement with the state of Montana, Plain Green does not make loans to Montana residents.

The tribe's lawsuit against Encore says Plain Green has made at least $25 million for Rocky Boy's Indian Reservation since 2011, though Rosette said he believes the Chippewa Cree's profits from the business are much higher.

"No one in their wildest dreams thought this would take off the way it did," Rosette said. "I don't feel ashamed about the money I was getting from that place. I didn't ask for it. I was offered it."

But, aside from the board and some tribal leaders, tribal members who might have objected were kept in the dark about the payments, the arbitrator said in the July decision.

"Tribal members here get envious and jealous of people when they make money like that," Rosette said. "If you get a little bit ahead, someone is going to try to bring you down."

Testimony by Encore's executives during the arbitration hearing backed up Rosette. "It was my understanding that the board of directors did not want the rest of the community to be aware that Neal and Billi Anne were getting the extra money," Encore's managing member, Zachary Jones, testified.

The Havre Daily News and The Associated Press have not been able to reach Morsette for comment.

Rosette told the Havre Daily News that the reason The Associated Press had not been able to reach him for comment prior to Tuesday is that, after the action of the tribe, he could not afford to keep his listed number operational and was using a TracFone.

“The reason my telephone is disconnected is due to the fact that as a direct result of this breach of contract, which occurred in 2013, I and my family have undergone severe financial hardship and I have been basically ‘blackballed’ from working on my own reservation,” he said in a prepared statement.

Rosette resigned from Plain Green Jan. 24, 2012, but he continued to receive the payments as part of a severance agreement. They did not stop until August 2013, when the tribe sought to end its agreement with Encore.

Rosette is now suing the tribe, Plain Green, and associated companies First American Resources of Rocky Boy, Think Finance of Texas and GPL Servicing of Cayman Islands in tribal court to obtain the money he says he is due as well as damages for “unsubstantiated fraud claims” against him and Encore Services he said they made.

He said he was not aware of the separate deal to pay Eastlick 2 percent of Plain Green's revenues, though Rosette acknowledged he and Morsette cut Eastlick in on a share of their 5 percent for providing them with cash to help start their consulting business.

Rosette’s lawsuit against the tribe is a continuation of a suit he and Morsette filed in state District Court earlier this year. He said Tuesday that suit stalled after the tribe hired a high-priced out-of-state law firm and his attorneys would not pursue the case.

In his prepared statement, he said the real issue is that the tribe is receiving very little from the business he and Morsetted helped it create.

“I am saddened and depressed that my own tribe would make me out to be a scapegoat and look like a crook in this matter when all I did was assist in creating a very successful business that brought in millions to our tribe and created sorely needed jobs for our tribal members … ,” he said in the statement. “The real story that should be pursued is how our tribe only receives 4.5 percent of the revenues generated from Plain Green and at the same time the ‘golden goose’ (Think Finance) receives 95.5 percent of the revenues even though our tribe is supposed to own and control this business. Who owns and controls what?”