Feds award Cotter for Guardians successes

Staff and wire report

A successful program to fight fraud and corruption on Montana Indian reservations was lauded this week in the nation’s capitol.

Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General Daniel R. Levinson recognized Montana U.S. Attorney Mike Cotter Tuesday with the agency’s prestigious Inspector General’s Award for Excellence for his efforts and the efforts of his office in combating corruption in federal grants and contracts with the Guardians Project, a multi-agency strike force Cotter established to investigate and prosecute fraud and embezzlement in Montana’s Indian Country.

In the three years since the Guardians Project began obtaining indictments from the federal grand jury in late 2012, 38 indictments and two informations have been filed charging 81 defendants and resulting in over 100 felony convictions for crimes including conspiracy, bribery, fraud, embezzlement, extortion, obstruction of justice, money laundering, blackmail and tax evasion.

A large number of those indictments — and convictions — have come from investigations on Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation.

Cotter was quick to acknowledge and applaud the work and talent of those attached to the Guardians Project while accepting the award.

“All the honor belongs to the investigators and prosecutors who have trudged through the muck and mire of corrupt officials, greedy contractors, and opportunistic government employees,” he said. “Agents are on the road for weeks and away from their homes and families to root out corruption in Montana and to make the homes and families of our tribal communities better. They make the sacrifice and it is they that should receive the awards, the acknowledgement, and the gratitude for a job truly well done.”

The Guardians Project is led by the agents of the Offices of Inspector General for Interior and Health and Human Services, the FBI and the IRS. Other law enforcement agencies involved include agents from the Offices for Inspector General from Education, Housing and Urban Development, Agriculture, Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency and investigators from various tribal governments.

The project brings in and coordinates the work of agents from agencies involved in particular allegations of fraud, corruption and embezzlement.

Agents working for the inspectors general specialize in the investigation of fraud and corruption, and other forms of abuse of taxpayer monies, and possess specialized knowledge of federal programs.

Cotter supported the Guardians Project, which was designed and launched by his Economic Crimes Unit attorneys in 2011, “as a way to do more than hold a particular defendant accountable, but also as a way to find errors in oversight and management of federal tax dollars that could lead to better government on the front end of the grants and contracts process.”

The Guardians Project brought together inspectors general with the resources and traditional public corruption investigation responsibility of the FBI and the IRS.

The project has had some high-profile successes, such as the prosecutions and convictions of six defendants associated with the Po’Ka Program for disadvantaged youth on the Blackfeet reservation, with many of the highest-profile cases from Rocky Boy or with people living off the reservation but accused of — and some pleading guilty to or being convicted of — embezzling federal money allocated there. Many of the cases are interrelated, others are separate from other alleged — or proven — fraud and embezzlement.

The cases include the prosecution and conviction of Tony Belcourt, chief executive officer of Chippewa Cree Construction Corp. and former tribal council member and state representative, along with former tribal chairmen John “Chance” Houle and Bruce Sunchild Sr..

Havre psychologist James Howard Eastlick Jr., and members of his family from Laurel, also pleaded guilty to charges, and the case against Havre businessman and former Havre School Board Chair Shad Huston still is pending.

The former chief executive officer of the Rocky Boy Health Clinic, Fawn Tadios, and former Clinic Finance Manager Theodora Morsette were convicted by juries in 2014 and 2015, respectively. Another Health Clinic CEO, Tim Rosette, has been indicted on an assortment of bribery and theft charges, and the most recent acting CEO, Darrin Miller, has been indicted for tax evasion.

Agents also secured the conviction at a jury trial earlier this year of John Lyon, the State Director of the Bureau of Land Management for the Eastern States Region for paying his deputy director for eight months — about $112,000 — even though that deputy had left his BLM job in July 2012 and began working for the Chippewa Cree Tribe in Montana. That former deputy director, Larry Denny, was also convicted for taking a federal paycheck through March of 2013 when the scheme was discovered.