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Petition against Osage Casinos CEO and attorney dismissed

The motion to dismiss says there was a misunderstanding among the parties and no one was trying to thwart the law

The Osage Nation Gaming Commission dismissed its petition threatening to strip the current Chief Executive Officer of Osage Casinos of her license and ban her as well as the Gaming Enterprise Board’s attorney working for the tribal casinos.

The Aug. 3 decision to drop the case was based on the realization that the accusations against Kimberly Pearson and attorney Greg Laird were based on a misunderstanding, according to the motion to dismiss, which was signed jointly by the lawyer for the Gaming Commission, Eugene Bertman, and Laird.

The motion says that Laird and Pearson acknowledge that agents with the Gaming Commission have the right to interview casino employees during audits and investigations.

Laird and Pearson had believed they had an agreement with the commission that all questions regarding the audit would go through Laird, but in fact the agreement was that the commission would request documents through Laird. The commission still retained its right to interview casino employees without any limitations, the agreement says.

“This misunderstanding is the basis of the current action,” the motion to dismiss says. “The laws cited in the Petition require an element of intent by the wrongdoers. Based on conversations with the parties, there was no intent to circumvent Osage law but rather a misunderstanding of the procedures in the instant case, and Respondents [Pearson and Laird] acknowledge the ONGC’s investigatory authority is not subject to limitations interposed by the regulated entity.”

The particular audit in question was one centering on credit card usage by casino employees, specifically the general manager of the Tulsa casino, Jeffry Bailey, the Director of Security and Surveillance, James Redcorn, Chief Information Officer Joe Roybal, Purchasing Manager Stephanie Parker and Acting Director of Compliance Ashlee Hartness.

In June, auditors were rebuffed from unscheduled personal interviews with the employees and a series of testy communications ensued during which Laird insisted that all communications go through him and Pearson sent an email to all casino employees instructing them to refer questions to Laird should they be approached by gaming investigators – an email she based on Laird’s advice.

The Gaming Commission came down swift and hard on both Laird and Pearson: On July 7, it filed a licensing action against Pearson that included the proposed banishment of Laird from working for the Gaming Enterprise because they had allegedly refused to cooperate with and obstructed a legitimate investigation. The action had proposed fining Pearson up to $25,000, revoking her gaming license, banning her and Laird from the casinos or having contracts with the casinos or the Gaming Enterprise Board.

The credit card audit is an extension of the investigation into spending by former CEO Byron Bighorse, who resigned in December 2022 after the Osage Nation Congress reclassified his confidential expense reports as public and faces a licensing hearing in late August. Pearson had been the Chief Operations Officer for the casinos – No. 2 in the leadership.

Calandra McCool, an attorney with Big Fire Law in Omaha, Neb., who was hired to represent Pearson and Laird in the licensing action, attended the Aug. 3 Gaming Commission meeting telephonically, as did most others. Both parties, McCool said, had been set straight and there was no intent to thwart the law: “There’s no reason for this case to go forward.”

Author

  • Louise Red Corn

    Title: Freelance Author
    Twitter: @louiseredcorn
    Languages: English, Italian, rusty but revivable Russian

    Louise Red Corn has been a news reporter for 34 years and a photographer for even longer. She grew up in Northern California, the youngest child of two lawyers, her father a Pearl Harbor survivor who later became a state judge and her mother a San Francisco native who taught law at the University of California at Davis.

    After graduating from the U.C. Berkley with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures with no small amount of coursework in Microbiology, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she worked as a photographer and wordsmith for the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, specializing in the French-speaking countries of Africa.

    When the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl parked over Rome in 1986, she escaped to New York City to work for the international editions of Time Magazine. She left Time for Knight-Ridder newspapers in Biloxi, Miss., Detroit and Lexington, Ky., During nearly 20 years with Knight-Ridder, she was a stringer (freelancer) for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Parade Magazine.

    In 2004, she married Raymond Red Corn and moved to Oklahoma, where she worked for the Tulsa World before she bought the weekly newspaper in Barnsdall and turned a tired newspaper into the award-winning Bigheart Times, which she sold in 2018. She hired on at the Osage News in early 2022.

    Throughout her career she has won dozens of state, national and international journalism awards.

    Red Corn is comfortable reporting on nearly any topic, the more complex the better, but her first love is covering courts and legal issues. Her proudest accomplishment was helping to exonerate a Tennessee man facing the death penalty after he was wrongfully charged with capital murder in Kentucky, a state he had never visited.

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Louise Red Corn
Louise Red Cornhttps://osagenews.org
Title: Freelance Author
Twitter: @louiseredcorn
Languages: English, Italian, rusty but revivable Russian

Louise Red Corn has been a news reporter for 34 years and a photographer for even longer. She grew up in Northern California, the youngest child of two lawyers, her father a Pearl Harbor survivor who later became a state judge and her mother a San Francisco native who taught law at the University of California at Davis.

After graduating from the U.C. Berkley with a degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures with no small amount of coursework in Microbiology, she moved to Rome, Italy, where she worked as a photographer and wordsmith for the United Nation’s International Fund for Agricultural Development, specializing in the French-speaking countries of Africa.

When the radioactive cloud from Chernobyl parked over Rome in 1986, she escaped to New York City to work for the international editions of Time Magazine. She left Time for Knight-Ridder newspapers in Biloxi, Miss., Detroit and Lexington, Ky., During nearly 20 years with Knight-Ridder, she was a stringer (freelancer) for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Parade Magazine.

In 2004, she married Raymond Red Corn and moved to Oklahoma, where she worked for the Tulsa World before she bought the weekly newspaper in Barnsdall and turned a tired newspaper into the award-winning Bigheart Times, which she sold in 2018. She hired on at the Osage News in early 2022.

Throughout her career she has won dozens of state, national and international journalism awards.

Red Corn is comfortable reporting on nearly any topic, the more complex the better, but her first love is covering courts and legal issues. Her proudest accomplishment was helping to exonerate a Tennessee man facing the death penalty after he was wrongfully charged with capital murder in Kentucky, a state he had never visited.

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