Federal grand jury subpoenas Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe for documents related to the election of Chairman Cedric Cromwell
A federal grand jury investigation into the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe is now digging for information on the re-elections of tribal Chairman Cedric Cromwell, according to records obtained by MassLive.
Roughly three months after a grand jury requested that the tribe hand over information related to its finances, MassLive has learned that federal officials are requesting that the tribe turn over documents and records related to the 2013 and 2017 elections for tribal council chairperson, according to a copy of an Aug. 10 subpoena obtained by MassLive.
In June, federal prosecutors requested all records and documents related to the tribe’s finances. A little more than a year ago, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas for the tribe’s sitting treasurer, Gordon Harris, and his predecessor, Robert Hendricks.
It is unclear whether the subpoenas issued in 2019 are related to the requests for information issued in June and in August.
Cromwell, who has led the tribe since 2009, has more recently come under fire for his handling of the tribe’s finances. Sources tell MassLive that the 2,600-member Mashpee tribe has accumulated a debt burden that has spiraled to more than $500 million — money that is owed chiefly to its financier, Genting Malaysia.
That scrutiny reached a boiling point last year when a group of tribe members attempted to oust Cromwell, his vice chairman and treasurer, through a recall process written into the tribe’s constitution. Tribe members cited, among other things, the out-of-control debt and the secrecy surrounding tribal finances. Ultimately, the effort was stymied after the tribe’s Election Committee abruptly canceled the planned recall election in September.
The grand jury subpoena comes several months after the U.S. Department of the Interior told the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe that its reservation will be disestablished and the land taken out of trust in what felt like a death blow to a tribe locked in a prolonged legal battle over 321 acres of land in Taunton and its proposal to build a casino there.
A federal judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in a separate lawsuit in early June that the Interior’s decision to take the land out of the trust was “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and contrary to law,” and remanded the matter back to the federal agency.
Cromwell’s predecessor, Glenn Marshall, spent several years in federal prison in connection with a wide-reaching corruption probe. He was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in federal prison in 2009 for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from the tribe to pay his own bills, making illegal campaign contributions, filing false tax returns and fraudulently receiving Social Security benefits while holding a full-time job.
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