{"id":9730,"date":"2020-02-05T21:47:54","date_gmt":"2020-02-06T02:47:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/reservation-community-responds\/"},"modified":"2020-02-05T21:48:00","modified_gmt":"2020-02-06T02:48:00","slug":"reservation-community-responds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/cannon-ball-nd-58528\/reservation-community-responds\/","title":{"rendered":"Reservation community responds"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/span><\/div>

Part III of a series<\/p>\n

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Geneva Lone Hill inside the community center, which is one of four buildings constructed by the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation. (Photo by Ernestine Anukasan)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

BATESLAND \u2013 The community that was victimized by a scam that took advantage of the abject poverty that grips much of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation responded to recent press coverage by Native Sun News Today.
\nThe Wakpamni District, with a population of about 5,000, is one of nine districts located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Southwest South Dakota. The reservation is located within Oglala Lakota County which was designated by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1980 as the poorest county in the nation.
\nThis designation was the icing on the cake that enabled a few unscrupulous individuals to concoct a scam that defrauded investors out of more than $60 million by taking advantage of these impoverished people.
\nAccording to Geneva Lone Hill, President of the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation, in 2014 members of the WLCC had traveled to the Reservation Economic Summit (RES2014) in Las Vegas seeking economic opportunities.
\nWith little or no capital, no land base and no collateral it is often difficult for tribal members and tribal communities to obtain loans from banks to invest in their business ventures.
\nSo when they encountered a man named John Galanis who was staffing a booth inside one of the conference rooms pitching his bond offering scheme, Galanis seemed like a Godsend.
\nLone Hill said Galanis was representing Burnham Securities, a firm they believed to be well-established and reputable. Galanis had also been targeting other Native American tribes at the RES conference, but of all the tribes Galanis could have chosen to inflict his multimillion dollar scam on, it\u2019s a shame he targeted the poorest people in the U.S.
\nAccording to a lawsuit filed in October 2019 by Chicago Transit Authority Retiree Health Care Trust and the Board of Trustees for the Chicago Transit Authority Retiree Health Care Trust (RCHT) aimed at the law firms Dilworth Paxson, LLP; Timothy Anderson; and Greenberg Traurig, LLP, in March of 2014 while at the RES2014 conference, Raycen Raines, CEO of the WLCC invited former WLCC attorney Timothy Anderson to attend a meeting with John Galanis to discuss a proposal for the bond offering.
\n\u201cDuring the meeting, John Galanis explained his proposal to have WLCC issue debt in the form of bonds. Unlike other municipal bonds, the vast majority of the bond proceeds under Galanis\u2019s plan would be invested in an annuity contract with an offshore insurance company. The revenues from the annuity contract would then be used to pay the principal and interest payments due on the bonds (i.e., the debt service).\u201d
\nThe lawsuit states that if the plan had worked it would have generated \u201cfree money\u201d for WLCC and that the annuity concept was \u201cnovel\u201d and \u201csomething new.\u201d
\nSo when WLCC entered into a partnership with what they believed were reputable representatives of Burnham Securities, which was pitched as co-owned by Hunter Biden, the Vice-President\u2019s son and others, they believed it was the answer to their hopes and dreams for a better tomorrow.
\nAccording to Lone Hill the money generated would have given the Wakpamni District ample capital to invest in a warehouse where they could ship goods they had produced locally, a laundromat, a bakery, a community building for Bingo and community events, a tutoring facility to teach Lakota language and entrepreneurial skills, an incubator for business start-ups, a sewing center and a bowling alley.
\nWhen WLCC received an initial payment of $2,250,000, which was held in trust by U.S. Bank, Lone Hill said the community broke ground on construction of their warehouse.
\nHowever when the rest of money they were promised failed to deliver, community members became suspicious and began an investigation, Lone Hill said. What they uncovered would send shockwaves all the way to the Whitehouse.
\n\u201cOn the surface everything was completely legit. It was so sophisticated,\u201d said an attorney for WLCC. \u201cWhen you\u2019re on the outside looking in, it all looked completely legit.\u201d
\nAfter the members of the community gathered evidence in what they believed was a scam, Lone Hill said they turned over what they uncovered to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.
\nThe U.S. Attorney\u2019s office took their claims seriously and began an investigation. However the scam turned out to be so sophisticated even the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office had difficulty figuring it all out and it would take them several years to prosecute and convict Jason Galanis, Hugh Dunkerley, Gary Hirst, John Galanis, a\/k\/a \u201cYanni,\u201d Bevan Cooney, Devon Archer and Michelle Morton in the fraud against the Wakpamni community and the trust funds who invested in the bonds. www.justice.gov\/usao-sdny\/pr\/seven-defendants-charged-manhattan-federal-court-defrauding-native-american-tribe-and<\/a>
\nLone Hill said they were called to be witnesses in the trial against the perpetrators and had to travel to New York to testify. All seven of the defendants were tried and convicted in varying degrees of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud. However Devon Archer would have his conviction overturned by the judge who heard the case against him.
\nArcher had been a partner with his former college roommate, Hunter Biden and connected to an opaque investment company, called Rosemont Seneca Bohai, LLC, which on information and belief, was affiliated with the investment company Rosemont Seneca Partners, LLP.
\nSince that time the scandal continues to be in the news even catching the attention of the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
\nThe Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation (WLCC) issued the following statement in October in response to news coverage on the Galanis Bond Fraud and an official statement from the firm that represented WLCC in the bond sale and named in the Chicago lawsuit, Greenburg Traurig.
\nThe criminal cases against Galanis and others were settled nearly two years ago. But because Hunter
\nBiden\u2019s name was involved and because of the recent Chicago civil lawsuit the case is back in the news.
\n\u25cf WLCC and several retirement funds, were the victims of a bond fraud. Our economic development project was and is very real, the bond companies we dealt with were legitimate. But there were criminals working for them behind the scenes.
\n\u25cf Once we realized something was wrong, we went to the federal prosecutors.
\n\u25cf The US Attorney\u2019s Office in NY, the FBI, and the SEC conducted a long investigation and charged all the bad actors.
\n\u25cf WLCC, our staff, our lawyers, and our business partners, had nothing to do with the fraud. We turned in the criminals and we testified against them.
\n\u25cf WLCC, our CEO Raycen Raines, and all our team was exonerated by the federal investigators. The guilty people are all in jail.
\n\u25cf After the criminal cases were finished, the investors that lost money started filing lawsuits against different people and companies to try and get some of their money back. The Chicago lawsuit from last week is another one of those cases filed.
\n\u25cf Neither OST nor Wakpamni District are liable. They were not parties to the bond.
\n\u25cf WLCC, nor our staff Mr. Raines, nor our business partner Mr. Haynes are defendants in the Chicago lawsuit.
\n\u25cf But the Chicago lawyers still made many statements which are wrong.
\n\u25cf We understand the investors are devastated and doing everything they can to file lawsuits against whomever they can. We as Lakota know better than almost anyone how it feels to be targeted and wronged. As retirees, as elders, our hearts hurt for their losses.
\n\u25cf But we too are victims and false statements in the Chicago complaint re-victimizes us.
\n\u25cf Statements in a complaint by an upset party does not change the facts of the case that were thoroughly investigated by the federal government, litigated in federal criminal court, and the guilty people were sent to jail.
\n\u25cf We are not defendants in the Chicago lawsuit and are not going to get drawn into their legal arguments, but there are many organizational and factual inaccuracies their non-Tribal lawyers are stating their claims from.
\n\u25cf Mr. Raines and Mr. Haynes are not our \u201cfinanciers.\u201d Mr. Raines is our staff, he is our CEO. Mr. Haynes was hired by us to be our project developer as we have all worked together successfully in the past.
\n\u25cf WLCC does not \u201cexercise undue influence over\u201d the Wakpamni Lake Community. The Wakpamni Lake Community owns WLCC. WLCC is the wholly owned economic development arm of the Wakpamni Lake Community tasked with creating new income, new employment, new infrastructure and new services for the benefit of our Tribal Community members.
\n\u25cf OST is the tribe. Under the tribe there are Districts and Community governments. The OST constitution and code give Districts and Communities their own authority to pursue economic development.
\n\u25cf The OST Council got in a political fight with the OST President Brewer. President Brewer had asked our CEO to assist him with some of his economic development projects, including TED Bonds. When the OST Council tried to impeach President Brewer they passed a resolution also stopping business with our CEO. WLCC and OST are separate. Regardless of OST\u2019s decision, Mr. Raines always kept his authority with WLCC as our CEO. We never issued TED bonds.
\n\u25cf OST never voted against our bond project. Some investors asked for a resolution of support from
\nOST, so we asked OST for it. The OST Council and the OST Economic & Business Development Committee members told us and our lawyers that WLCC already had the authority to do it and they were not going to waste time passing a resolution saying something we could already do. The tribe\u2019s lawyer sent us a formal letter stating that.
\n\u25cf Our economic development project for this bond was to complete a planned set of commercial and community buildings known as the Town Center that would include businesses for the commercial buildings generating income and employment. The buildings did not get completed. But not due to mismanagement of funds by WLCC. EVERY single dollar WLCC spent on the project was accounted for. They didn\u2019t get completed because we discovered the fraud and promptly turned them in during the middle of constructing our project. We then we gave the last bit of bond money for the construction project that we had to US Bank the bond trustee, to do an investigation of the bad actors.
\nWe understand the retirement funds are upset. We have also been devastated by this fraud, but now we are being re-victimized all over again by the Chicago complaint with the many false statements.
\nEven though we were the victims, and our team did nothing wrong, this hangs over Indian Country and our Community every day. We had to put all our economic projects on hold when the news articles came out two years ago, and now maybe we will have to again as the inaccurate claims draw out the emotions and not the logic from those that read the complaints.
\nIt is hard enough to do economic development on rural isolated Indian reservations without having
\nfalsehoods on top of the fraud. Please read the facts of the actual government case. Please ask us directly if you have any questions, glonehill@gmail.com<\/a> . Thank you
\nGeneva Lone Hill
\nPresident, Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation (WLCC)<\/p>\n

Below is Greenberg Traurig\u2019s official statement on this topic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fraud perpetuated against WLCC was a tragedy for all. WLCC was a victim of the fraud and its attorneys did not assist the fraud in any way. That is shown by the fact that neither WLCC nor its attorneys were charged in the criminal proceedings against the wrong doers who have pleaded guilty.\u201d
\nNext week: Wakpamni Lake: Making a comeback<\/p>\n

(Contact Ernestine Anukasan at production@nativesunnews.today<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Part III of a series Geneva Lone Hill inside the community center, which is one of four buildings constructed by the Wakpamni Lake Community Corporation. (Photo by Ernestine Anukasan) BATESLAND \u2013 The community that was victimized by a scam that took advantage of the abject poverty that grips much of <\/p>\n

Read More<\/a>
Shared by Native Sun News Today<\/a> February 5, 2020<\/p>\n

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