Las Vegas men sentenced in Plain Green case

Staff and wire report — Two Las Vegas businessmen have been sentenced to 20 months in prison for their roles in defrauding the Chippewa Cree Tribe’s online lending company, Plain Green.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office says Zachary Brooke Roberts and Martin Gasper Mazarra were sentenced Friday in federal court in Great Falls. They and their company — Encore Services — must pay $2.5 million in restitution to the Chippewa Cree tribe.

Prosecutors say Encore Services was brought in to run an earlier online lending company of the tribe. It was not involved in Plain Green, but still received $3.5 million and diverted $1.2 million back to others, including Plain Green CEO Neal Rosette and COO Billi Ann Morsette.

Rosette and Morsette pleaded guilty in 2015 to charges involving Plain Green.

Prosecutors say Roberts and Mazarra initially got involved with the tribe to use tribal sovereignty to circumvent maximum interest rates and other state regulations for short-term lending companies.

Rocky Boy’s first involvement with online lending was the payday lending company PDL Ventures, which operated under several names before becoming PDL Ventures.

Some speculated that PDL Ventures was a “rent-a-tribe” scheme where out-of-state companies were paying the Chippewa Cree to be able to list it as the owner of the company and use its tribal sovereignty to avoid state and federal lending regulations.

The company almost immediately started receiving complaints, with the Spokane Better Business Bureau saying it received more complaints, 110 in five months, than any other business in its operating region.

Rosette, who was operating as the tribe’s public information officer at the time, said then that it was a case of mistaken identity, with complaints filed against other companies using similar names being assigned to Rocky Boy’s company.

Rosette and other officials never returned calls asking for comments on whether the company truly was owned by the Chippewa Cree.

In 2011, Rosette said PDL Ventures was in its last days as the tribe transitioned to its new venture, Plain Green, which he said would be a wholly owned operation of the tribe to bring revenue to the tribe.

According to court documents, earlier, in May 2010, tribal officials created First American Capital Resources as a tribally owned company to partner with outside interests to provide online loans that would be exempt from state and federal lending regulation. Rosette was the company’s chief executive officer and Morsette was the chief operating officer.

Encore signed on in a management agreement for First American.

In March 2011, the tribe, working with Think Finance of Fort Worth, Texas, created Plain Green as another online lending company.