Native American Tribes Attempt to Recover After Being Defrauded of Tens of Millions by Abr

Yesterday Abramoff admitted to defrauding four Indian tribe clients out of millions of dollars. Those tribes include the Louisiana Coushatta, the Mississippi Choctaws, the Saginaw Chippewas of Michigan and the Tigua of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Texas. The tribes hired Abramoff to represent them in Washington regarding casino and gambling issues. As their lobbyist, Abramoff instructed the tribes to make political donations to certain politicians and recommended they hire a former aide of Tom DeLay named Michael Scanlon as their publicist. Scanlon charged hugely inflated rates. What Abramoff didn’t tell the tribes was that Scanlon was secretly his business partner and that in some cases Abramoff was also working for groups with competing policy goals.

In all, Abramoff and Scanlon received more than $66 million in fees. Some of this money was secretly diverted to a variety of Abramoff’s personal projects including an Orthodox Jewish academy and an Israeli sniper school. Some money also went to pay off a personal debt.

In 2002, Abramoff and Scanlon quietly worked with conservative religious activist Ralph Reed to persuade the state of Texas to shut down the Tigua tribe’s Standing Rock casino on the grounds that the casino violated Texas’ limited gambling laws. Abramoff then went to the Tiguas and promised to use his influence to reopen the casino, charging the tribe $4.2 million.

Meanwhile, Abramoff and Scanlon collected millions of dollars from a Louisiana tribe to oppose all gaming in the Texas Legislature. During the 2004 Senate Indian Affair Committee hearings, emails were made public in which Abramoff referred to tribal members as “trogdolytes” and “morons”. In one email released by the Senate committee, Abramoff wrote to Scanlon, “I have to meet with the monkeys from the Choctaw tribal counsel.” Former Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell was the chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in 2004 when it took up investigating Abramoff. He was also the first Native American Senator in more than 60 years. Campbell wrote in a statement at the time, “It is a story of greed run amuck. It is a story of two already powerful, wealthy men lining their own pockets with the hard-earned money of people whom they held in contempt and disregard.”

* Ben Nighthorse Campbell, former Senator of Colorado and former chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
* Arturo Senclair, tribal governor of the Tiguas of Ysleta del Sur Pueblo in Texas.

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