Times-Standard

Posted:   02/02/2013 02:19:07 AM PST

Updated:   02/02/2013 02:19:08 AM PST

State charges for Raymond, LeValley, McAllister dismissed in $1M embezzlement case; U.S. Attorney’s Office expected to move for

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_22338240/state-charges-raymond-levalley-mcallister-dismissed-1m-embezzlement

State charges for Raymond, LeValley, McAllister dismissed in $1M embezzlement case; U.S. Attorney’s Office expected to move forward with case

Kaci Poor

The Times-Standard

January 9, 2013

State charges against a former Yurok Tribe forestry director and two biologists accused of embezzling nearly $1 million from the tribe were dismissed Tuesday.

Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander said the state case was dismissed without prejudice against Roland Raymond, 50, to allow the case to move forward through the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

”No purpose is served with continuances here, which are needlessly clogging up our court system,” he said.

Alexander said state charges have also been dismissed without prejudice against biologists Sean McAllister and Ron LeValley, who appeared alongside Raymond in court Tuesday. Del Norte County prosecutors and an FBI agent investigating the case allege the men conspired with Raymond to embezzle the funds from the Yurok Tribe through the consulting company Mad River Biologists.

All the men had pleaded not guilty to embezzlement and conspiracy charges.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Raymond in August, charging him with a single count of embezzlement from an Indian tribal organization.

McAllister’s attorney Greg Rael said he had not heard if federal prosecutors plan to charge his client. U.S. Attorney’s Office spokesman Jack Gillund said Tuesday he could neither confirm nor deny whether federal charges have been filed against McAllister and LeValley.

Dismissing the charges without prejudice, Alexander said allows the state to refile the charges later “if we feel that justice is not meted out in the federal system.”

”I want to stress that by dismissing the charges, we have by no means lost the jurisdiction to pursue this matter,” he said. “I want to make sure the Yurok people and all of the victims of this crime know we have not abandoned them.”

All three men are accused of using an elaborate system of fake invoices, false purchase requests and electronic bank transfers to embezzle more than $870,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe during a three-year period of wildlife preservation studies. Raymond is suspected of embezzling additional funds from the tribe and the California Indian Forest and Fire Management Council through other false purchase requests, putting the embezzlement total in the $1 million range.

Raymond is scheduled to be arraigned Jan. 14 at the federal courthouse in Eureka. If convicted in the case, he faces five years in prison, $250,000 in fines and a three-year term of supervised release.

Kaci Poor can be reached at 441-0504 or kpoor@times-standard.com

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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

This information and much more that you need to know about the ESA,
the Klamath River Basin, and private property rights can be found at The
Klamath Bucket Brigade’s web site – http://klamathbucketbrigade.org/index.html –
please visit today.

PNP comment: No change in the leadership of the Yurok Tribe — either. — Editor Liz Bowen

Thomas O’Rourke selected for Yurok Tribe chairman – Times-Standard Online

http://www.times-standard.com/ci_21957707/thomas-orourke-selected-yurok-tribe-chairman

The Times-Standard

November 8, 2012

The Yurok Tribe had its runoff elections for tribal chairman Wednesday and the tribe announced today that the incumbent received the most votes.

The election was between incumbent Thomas O’Rourke, Sr. and Raymond McQuillen. O’Rourke received 53 percent of the vote while McQuillen received 47 percent, according to the tribe’s election department.

The election board will meet Nov. 13 to certify the election results. For more information, contact the Yurok Tribe’s election department at 482-1350 or go online to www.yuroktribe.org.

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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

This information and much more that you need to know about the ESA,
the Klamath River Basin, and private property rights can be found at The
Klamath Bucket Brigade’s web site – http://klamathbucketbrigade.org/index.html –
please visit today.

Hearing continued on three accused of embezzlement – Times-Standard Online

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_21651665/hearing-continued-three-accused-embezzlement

Hearing continued on three accused of embezzlement

The Times-Standard

September 28, 2012

A hearing was continued Thursday for Roland Raymond, Ron LeValley and Sean McAllister, who are accused of embezzling more than $1 million from the Yurok Tribe.

Federal charges have been filed against Raymond, but have not yet been filed against McAllister or LeValley.

Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander indicated that he plans to dismiss state charges against all three men once federal charges have been filed against McAllister and LeValley.

Alexander told the Times-Standard earlier this week that federal court was an appropriate venue for prosecution, and said the U.S. attorney’s office is examining the case.

”They’re being very methodical about it,” he said.

The matter was continued to Jan. 8.

Raymond, McAllister and LeValley are accused of using an elaborate system of fake invoices, false purchase requests and electronic bank transfers to embezzle more than $870,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe during a three-year period of wildlife preservation studies.

Raymond is suspected of embezzling additional funds from the tribe and the California Indian Forest and Fire Management Council through other false purchase requests, putting the embezzlement total in the $1 million range.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

This information and much more that you need to know about the ESA,
the Klamath River Basin, and private property rights can be found at The
Klamath Bucket Brigade’s web site – http://klamathbucketbrigade.org/index.html –
please visit today.

Blue-green algae warning for Klamath – Times-Standard Online

PNP comment: This article is such a bunch of hooey! Blue-green algae is natural. There are several businesses who harvest it from the Upper Klamath Lake and sell it as a nutritional supplement. Creating a fear surrounding algae is just another ploy and myth to destroy the Klamath dams. Remember, if the dams are out the river will run much slower during low water of August and September (snow has melted) and so algae will be even thicker. So how is dam removal going to be better? What a lie! — Editor Liz Bowen

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_21523412/blue-green-algae-warning-klamath

The Times-Standard

September 12, 2012

Water quality officials are posting blue-green algae warnings along the Klamath River and its reservoirs, encouraging people to stay out of the water.

”It’s a human health issue,” said Craig Tucker, a Klamath campaign coordinator for the Karuk tribe. “The hotter and drier it is, the worse the algae blooms.”

Users are warned to avoid contact with the blue-green algae, which contains the microcystis toxin. Microcystin is a known tumor promoter and liver toxin, according to a press release from the Karuk Tribe Department of Natural Resources.

Craig said that the blooms affect reservoirs along the Klamath every year, but do not always contaminate the river downstream.

This year, however, posted warning areas include Copco Reservoir, Iron Gate Reservoir and the river itself downstream to Turwar on the Yurok Reservation.

PNP comment: Flawed science is being used to promote dam removal. Outrageous. — Editor Liz Bowen

Environmentalists have persuaded the Department of the Interior to remove four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River. These dams not only provide clean, green energy to the Klamath community, they sustain area ranches and farms with continual access to water. An environmentalist’s dream, right?

But the fish! We must always put fish ahead of people!

It seems that once upon a time, salmon would migrate upstream the Klamath River to spawn, a process that has become interrupted by the dams. For several decades, ranching and farming families have relied upon the steady stream of not only water, but also renewable energy provided by the dams. Destroying the dams would destroy these people’s livelihoods.

Grace Bennett, the board chair for the Siskiyou County Board of Supervisors, says:

“With the dams gone, it will impact our area … because there won’t be enough water in our river. It will not be a matter of when you irrigate, or how much you irrigate; it’ll be a matter of can you irrigate? Can you do these things? And if we don’t have the dams in, to give the water for the fish that return, and we’re taking that water from our farmers and ranchers, we won’t have any farmers and ranchers.”

What is the government’s obsession with prioritizing fish over people? This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this sort of thing in California. The Delta Smelt has destroyed much of the farming community in central California, because the ugly bugger ended up on the endangered species list and politicians decided to cut off the water from the San Joaquin Valley to the farmlands in order to ‘save’ it.

Now the salmon need saving too. Except maybe they don’t. It’s hard to tell, with all the twisted ‘evidence’ going into the decision-making process over the removal of the dams. Professor Paul Houser was a science advisor to the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation before he was fired for alleging “that the Obama administration intentionally falsified scientific fact in a proposal for dam removal in the Klamath River.”

Debbie Bacigalupi, a 5th generation rancher whose family depends on the dams to sustain their ranch, says, “The reason they want to take out the dams, the Klamath River dams, is because they claim, the government and special interest groups claim that the Coho salmon is an endangered species and that it’s indigenous, even though we have Department of Fish and Game records saying that the fish is non-native. It doesn’t even belong here.”

So much for progress.

The Yurok Grift, Questions linger in million-dollar embezzlement scheme after fugitive surrenders, North Coast Journal,

posted to KBC.org on  4/14/12.

KBC comment: “Field had already figured out that the Mad River Biologists invoices submitted for spotted owl research were fakes…an associate at Mad River Biologists acknowledged that they hadn’t conducted the surveys in question.”

tp://www.northcoastjournal.com/news/2012/04/12/yurok-grift/

Former Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond turns himself in – Times-Standard Online

http://www.times-standard.com/alerts/ci_20335560/former-yurok-tribe-forestry-director-roland-raymond-turns

Former Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond turns himself in

The Times-Standard

April 5, 2012

Former Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond, 49, was booked into the Del Norte County jail this morning at 9:30 a.m. after turning himself in to authorities, according to the Del Norte County District Attorney’s Office.

Raymond had been on the run since Feb. 23, when authorities served search warrants at his home on the 2200 block of Hillcrest Avenue just outside Eureka city limits. A $1 million warrant for Raymond’s arrest was issued, alleging he committed crimes of burglary, embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime.

It’s alleged that Raymond and his two co-conspirators used an elaborate system of fake invoices, false purchase requests and electronic bank transfers to embezzle more than $870,000 in federal funds from the Yurok Tribe during a three-year period of wildlife preservation studies. Raymond is suspected of embezzling additional funds from the tribe through other false purchase requests, putting the embezzlement total in the $1 million range.

Mad River Biologists’ senior biologist Ron LeValley, 65, and associate biologist Sean McAllister, 45, have already been arraigned in the case on charges of embezzlement, grant theft and conspiracy.

Raymond was arraigned at 1:15 p.m. today, where he pleaded not guilty to the charges stated in the warrant for his arrest. During the discussion of bail, Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander cited the fact that Raymond was the chief person in the conspiracy and had been at large since late February. Alexander asked the court for and received a $1 million bail amount on Raymond.

Alexander said the Del Norte District Attorney’s Office has been in communication with the Department of the Interior, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office regarding their possible trial of the case in federal court.

”Given the majority, if not total amount of embezzled funds being federal, we were glad to assist our colleagues in the federal government with our investigation, arrests and criminal charging,” Alexander said in a statement.

PNP comment:  So let’s see. While we commend the Yurok Tribe for creating a way for its people to earn a good living, we in Scott Valley wonder if there will be enough fish left to migrate up to Scott River? The Yurok Tribe has a Treaty with the U.S. where it is entitled to half of the returning salmon.

Problem: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service contracts with the Yurok Tribe to count the returning salmon. We wonder it they count the salmon BEFORE or AFTER they net their half. The Yurok Tribe and its neighboring Tribe the Karuks, who have no such Treaty, are always claiming we do not produce enough juvenile salmon. Hum, sufficient adult salmon must be allowed to return to lay the eggs. Yes, it looks like the fox is watching the hen house. — Editor Liz Bowen

Cannery on Yurok Reservation Planned: Funding Campaign : Indybay

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/14/18709325.php

Cannery on Yurok Reservation Planned: Funding Campaign

by Billee Willson ( thesourcefoodcompany [at] gmail.com )

March 14, 2012

Weitchpec , CA , March 14, 2012 — Efforts are being coordinated to create food security and livelihood for families on the Yurok Reservation. The project involves building a cannery and food processing center.

Efforts are being coordinated to create food security and livelihood for families on the Yurok Reservation. The project involves building a cannery and food processing center. A Yurok family launched the funding campaign using a crowd funding platform. The funds raised will be used to build an FDA approved cannery in Weitchpec on the eastern edge of the Yurok Reservation. The funding campaign features the smoked wild salmon and the blackberry and huckleberry jelly and jam gift sets. These will be the first products produced by the cannery.Their objectives are to build an FDA approved cannery; to develop a food distribution practice within the community; and to create a market for the surplus foods. The video on the website is 3 1/2 minutes long.

The great grandparents of the Yurok families living in Weitchpec and their great grandparents before them lived off the land and thrived. They were so resource rich that they had time to do fine basket weaving; to create regalia for their ceremonial dances; and to develop a sophisticated society.

In the years after the Allotment Act (Dawes Act), the great grand parents of the current residents became farmers and ranchers. The land is fertile, many crops thrive here and food is abundant for cattle. The fruit trees still remain from that time. The farmers and ranchers created sustainable lifestyles, both by harvesting their own labors and gathering, fishing and hunting.

This all sounds like the Yurok people should have continued to thrive, but many families lost their lands to taxes, their children moved away under the Relocation policy to the cities, and innovations in food processing drove prices down and food became plentiful and relatively inexpensive from the market place or as a government commodity and the farms and ranches died away. The folks who stayed in the area, worked in the booming lumber industry, but when that dried up too, the families struggled from day to day, month to month. They no longer thrived and this has been the case for nearly 40 years.

Those involved in this venture believe the families living there today can both create sustainability for themselves and thrive. The mountains, hillsides and rivers hold an abundance of resource that can support the food needs of the community’s families; provide to the local market locally processed foods; and provide hand crafted, alder smoked wild salmon for the gourmet market.

Food processed at the cannery will ensure the people living here have a food supply that is compatible to their genetic make-up and that will begin to combat the illnesses suffered resulting from nearly 40 years of an inappropriate diet.

The coordinators need your support to build the cannery and food processing center. In exchange, or as a reward for your support, they are offering cannery processed, hand-crafted, traditionally prepared, smoked salmon and blackberry and blackberry/huckleberry jam and jelly gift sets. Additional rewards include Yurok stories abstractly illustrated on postcards and greeting cards complete with the associated story and use of Spey-gee Point Resort.

For more information about the project and the rewards go to http://www.kickstarter.com and enter “Yurok’ in the search bar then select the project. To pledge to the project, click the green “Back This Project” button on the project page. You will be asked to enter your pledge amount and select a reward. From there, you will go through the Amazon checkout process. Note that you must finish the Amazon checkout process for your pledge to be recorded; the pledge amount will be debited from your account when the project is successful on April 2, 2012. When the project is funded, a questionnaire will be sent to confirm reward selection and shipping information.

Yurok tribal members, Tom and Morneen Willson, the owners of The Source Food Company and Spey-gee Point Resort and Guide Services in collaboration with Billee Willson, MBA, launched this funding campaign using the Kickstarter crowd funding platform. The funds raised will be used to build an FDA approved cannery in Weitchpec.

For additional information, Contact:
Billee Willson
The Source Food Company
530 852 1949
530 272 1114
thesourcefoodcompany [at] gmail.com
http://www.thesourcefoodcompany.com

The funding campaign features the smoked wild salmon and the black berry and huckleberry jelly and jam gift sets. These will be the first products produced by the cannery.

The Source Food Company’s objectives are to build an FDA approved cannery; to develop a food distribution practice within the community; and to create a market for the surplus foods. The company was established in December 2011.

http://www.thesourcefoodcompany.com

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NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

This information and much more that you need to know about the ESA,
the Klamath River Basin, and private property rights can be found at The
Klamath Bucket Brigade’s web site – http://klamathbucketbrigade.org/index.html –
please visit today.

Biologist embezzlement case may go federal – Times-Standard Online

http://www.times-standard.com/localnews/ci_20170175/biologist-embezzlement-case-may-go-federal

Biologist embezzlement case may go federal

Thadeus Greenson

The Times-Standard

March 14, 2012

State criminal proceedings against two biologists accused of embezzling almost $1 million from the Yurok Tribe have been temporarily postponed, allowing the U.S. Attorney’s Office time to review and consider taking on the case.

Mad River Biologists’ senior biologist Ron LeValley, 65, and associate biologist Sean McAllister, 45, have pleaded not guilty to charges of embezzlement and conspiracy to commit a crime stemming from their alleged roles in a scheme carried out by former Yurok Tribe Forestry Director Roland Raymond, 49, to defraud the tribe of more than $870,000 over the course of more than one year by billing for surveying work that was never done.

Raymond remains at large, wanted on a $1 million arrest warrant. He was last seen the morning of Feb. 23, hours before law enforcement officials arrived at his home with search and arrest warrants, according to Del Norte County District Attorney Jon Alexander.

McAllister’s attorney Greg Rael, who also specially appeared in court Tuesday for LeValley, said the criminal proceedings were postponed and the next court date set for May 1.

”The District Attorney’s Office believed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office would be taking the case over at some point in the future, so they wanted to postpone any further criminal proceedings in the state case to allow (federal prosecutors) to review the case,” Rael said.

Alexander was not immediately available for comment.

Thadeus Greenson can be reached at 441-0509 or tgreenson@times-standard.com.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, any copyrighted
material herein is distributed without profit or payment to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit
research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

This information and much more that you need to know about the ESA,
the Klamath River Basin, and private property rights can be found at The
Klamath Bucket Brigade’s web site – http://klamathbucketbrigade.org/index.html –
please visit today.