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Helping Our People Overcome Economic & Social Disadvantage

308 N. Piegan, Browning, MT

BLACKFEET RESERVATION

IF YOU DONATED BY CHECK IN 2012

Something pretty awful happened in December 2012, and it really pains me to talk about it.  But I consider money sent to us by donors to belong to those donors until such time as we spend it as promised.  Since it was your money, you are entitled to the story, though I hate telling it. 

​On December 21, 2012  (within a few days of dismissing him from his job at an enterprise I oversaw and just hours after he became aware I was about to audit the Fund) a Christmas Fund volunteer in my Browning office who had access to all the checks & cash mailed in by donors absconded with every single check & dollar.  To be clear, he had no authority whatsoever to do anything with the checks, other than keeping them safe until I entered them in the system and deposited them in the bank. 

Then he sent a taunting email to me implying he had taken the checks up to Tribal offices, which made no sense since they have nothing to do with operating the Christmas Fund.  Beside, this is 501(c)3 money that has for years been handled a very specific way (including going into a separate back account so as not to be mixed with Tribal funds).

Those checks & cash have never been recovered and we don’t know where the checks are or if they were cashed.   Earlier this year, Tribal investigators told me they did recall seeing some checks (but no cash) come across their desks around the time they went missing, but didn’t know why the checks were at Tribal offices in the first place.  In any case, investigators thought the checks had been returned to me because they saw the January 2013 newspaper article about our successful December 30, 2012 event.   When I told them I never got the checks back, they seemed surprised and didn't know where they were.  

Fortunately for our Blackfeet children, most donations come in over Paypal (which the volunteer in question had no access to) so we were able to have a successful event in 2012, with Tribal police and firemen delivering over a thousand gifts to many of the households most in need.

But we did run out of gifts before we hit all the neighborhoods we wanted to visit.   So, any way you slice it, many of the neediest households on the reservation didn't get gifts because of the actions of this person.   A lot of little Indians got cheated out of some Christmas excitement and joy by the inexplicable and despicable actions of one guy. It is hard to fathom anyone willfully depriving children of Christmas presents unless there was some ulterior motive, so the only explanation that makes sense to me is that this was a smokescreen or diversionary tactic to cover up wrongdoing of some sort.  

And that makes this bizarre incident even more interesting.  The person who took the checks & cash had originally been hired by me 18 months earlier.  Within minutes of hiring him, my phone started ringing with calls from unhappy Tribal leaders because he was a convicted felon who had served time in federal prison for stealing from the Blackfeet Nation. But I believe in second chances so I told them I would give the guy a chance.  I also said if any money went missing I would cover it. 

And that’s the good news for donors.  If your checks were cashed and the money can’t be recovered then I will cover it.  It was my fault to trust the guy and I agreed to cover any losses he might cause, so I just need to know how much and what happened and I will make it right. 

So if any of you who paid by check (or sent in cash) could please check your bank statements and let me know if your check was cashed (and by whom) I will add that amount to this year’s fund from my own pocket, which is the right and necessary thing to do in this case. 

Thank you,

Gregg Paisley