The Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana is shared by portions of the Sioux and the Assiniboine. The largest town, Wolf Point, was named for the tens of thousands of wolf pelts shipped from there in the last century by white trappers. Next in size is the town of Poplar, where the BIA Agency office is located near the tribal headquarters.
There are four smaller villages along U.S. Highway #2 that passes through the Reservation. They are Frazer, Brockton, Fort Kipp and Oswego, which (along with Poplar and Wolf Point) makes six towns that are involved in Docket #184. If you look at your road map or atlas, you’ll find these towns in the northeast corner of Montana.
In 1981 there was a court settlement for old land claims of the tribe, and the money awarded by the court was paid to BIA in trust for the tribe. The Docket #184 name comes from the court action where the money originated. Several accounts were used by BIA but we can think of it as one account or one pot holding Docket #184 money.
After lawyers were paid, most of the money was paid to tribal members, leaving a balance of over two million dollars in the pot, under the supervision of BIA.
That sounds like a lot of money, but not when you remember these are among the poorest people in the world, who were once wealthy with endless lands. The money is spread very thin among poor people, and they received a low price for their hundreds of thousands of acres of rich grasslands and minerals. You can be sure they wanted to keep the land, which they saw as holy, and to protect it from white exploitation.
In truth the land was bargained away at the point of a gun, like the wolf pelts long ago. Indians thought the wolf had a right to live, but the trappers saw only money and came to take whatever could be hauled away. It was portable wealth.
The wolves were all killed, there are none today. It appears to me that our Indians are likely to go next; they are also being sold out for money, so their land can be exploited for a quick profit.
An agreement was reached to divide the remaining Docket #184 balance among tribal towns and villages for community projects, like fire fighting equipment, community buildings and similar projects.
So far, no problem. All parties agreed that each of the communities owned a certain percentage of the balance in the fund. At this point, Bill Benjamin made a costly error. I am not aware of anything malicious about it, but he decided to keep the balances for all six communities in a common pot, instead of opening an account for each community. Now the problems start.
Several years went by with the money in this common pot, drawing interest. The communities were holding it for future needs, although some took part of their money for current projects.
While I was at BIA the communities were asking for a report of their balances, and I was assigned by Bill Benjamin to determine the share that each had in the remaining fund. The Indian trust beneficiaries had not had a report on their cash in years. If you happen to be an accountant who is reading this, the job sounds easy, but it was very complex.
As I got familiar with BIA’s trust accounting, I found that about a third of all bookkeeping entries were errors. If and when the errors were caught, and some went unnoticed for years, it took a large number of entries to correct the errors. Some of the corrections themselves were in error which required still more entries. This is the way it is at BIA, even inactive accounts show a flurry of bookkeeping entries, inadequate work, mistakes and general confusion.
I speak of a common pot or common fund to keep the story simple, but this fund was scattered over many bookkeeping accounts which made the task complex. Bill Benjamin had done some work to try to figure this out, and his assistant Bill Ellingson worked on it, but neither was able to solve the problem, or perhaps they just didn’t want to see the truth.
To make order out of chaos, I needed a computer. Although the business world relied heavily on computers at this time and I had used them in my daily work for thirty years, there was nothing available at BIA. At home I had a computer left from my accounting practice, so most of this work was done on my own time at home at night and on weekends.
I used my computer to rework the five year history of Docket #184. You will see in another chapter where Julie Matt found an illegal payment had been ordered out of Docket #184 by Benjamin. Even though I knew nothing about Julie Matt then, I found the same item. The account had been overdrawn by Benjamin in his hurry to get the money into the hands of a private investment firm. In addition I found something even more significant.
Benjamin had paid out too much money to Wolf Point and Poplar, at the expense of Frazer, Brockton, Fort Kipp and Oswego. The money was gone from the federal trust and I saw no way to recover it. It was not paid to some person who could pay it back, but went for general community benefits. The cash was gone and could not be recovered.
Since the cash for all six communities was held in a single fund, the four remaining communities had been shorted. They lost their trust-money and the interest they would have earned on it. They had a legal right to the money, so the shortage would have to come from the federal treasury, or perhaps from Benjamin’s pocket.
The shortage I computed was $94,525.88 and the payment took place in April of 1983 so there would be several years interest due. I don’t know that Benjamin made any personal profit from Docket #184 because he fired me before I finished my work. He also fired Julie Matt earlier when she noticed the illegal payment he made. That type of action by a Financial Manager should make an auditor’s scalp tingle with suspicion that all is not right.
I reported the facts to Benjamin verbally, and in a written memo on April 29, 1986. I did not place any blame nor was I judgmental about it. He did not agree with my report then or later. Rodney Young (a BIA accountant who was called in by Benjamin from BIA’s Albuquerque office) stated in his report on 9/16/86 that:
“we have reviewed ... Docket #184 and have found no erroneous or excessive disbursements,” and [Henry’s] report was “frivolous and unwarranted.”
There will be more information about Rodney Young’s report, which I call a serious cover-up (and fraud) done (apparently) at Benjamin’s request to conceal the cash shortage. Rodney Young spoke with forked tongue, and this book will give you absolute proof of that.
After being threatened with dismissal I filed a grievance. Benjamin responded on September 24, 1986 with “there were no excessive disbursements.” The problem was also cited in Benjamin’s letter which fired me later that year.
In my follow-up with BIA after being fired, BIA’s William Ragsdale (BIA’s chief employee) repeated in his letter to me dated December 17, 1987 that:
“There has been no over distribution.”
We need to settle the facts. Almost two years went by before OIG performed an audit (in response to the complaints from me) and released it’s official audit report number 88-116. Here is what that report said as of September, 1988;
“two communities have overdrawn their shares by about $93,000. ...”
“[Henry] ... raised the issue that the Bureau may be potentially liable for the overdraws ...”
“[Benjamin] did not agree ...”
“We disagree with [Benjamin] ...”
Auditor’s Recommendations: “direct the Billings Area Office ... to ... provide the ... tribes ... with an accounting ...”
There is no doubt about the facts. Julie Matt was correct and Benjamin fired her. I was correct and Benjamin fired me. OIG’s recommendation lacks guts, because it leaves the problem in the hands of the very person who caused it. Bill Benjamin is the person to prepare the accounting that reports the shortage, so I assume he will force those destitute Indians to accept his error.
If I had written the OIG audit report, I would have ordered the missing cash paid to the shorted communities with interest, and I would have ordered the Interior Solicitor (attorney) to recover the amount from Benjamin.
Where does this stand today? Julie Matt still suffers her indignity, and I suffer mine, financially ruined for life and unemployable. The four Indian communities don’t have their money. The Billings Area Director has been promoted. Rodney Young has apparently been promoted. Benjamin is still employed in financial management, but has been promoted to control a much larger piece of BIA. Ellingson is (or is about to be) retired, drawing Federal pay for the remainder of his life.
In a later chapter about fraud and reprisal, we will refer to Docket #184 again. Now let’s take a look at BIA’s irrigation projects, a long term and continuing source of fraud that takes property from Indians, and millions from taxpayer pockets.
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