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The settlement calls for former Seminole leader James E. Billie to repay the tribe $169,000.
By JEFF TESTERMAN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published August 21, 2002
TAMPA -- The Seminole Tribe has agreed to settle a lawsuit that accuses ousted Chairman James E. Billie and his former handpicked administrator, Timothy W. Cox, of falsifying records to misappropriate $241,000 in sick pay.
A second lawsuit in which the tribe accuses Billie, Cox and the Raymond James & Associates financial services company of a wide-ranging stock manipulation scheme has been dismissed on jurisdictional grounds.
The two actions lessen the legal problems of Billie, who led the Seminole Tribe from 1979 until he was suspended without pay in May 2001, and of Cox, a onetime police officer who managed the affairs of the 2,800-member tribe until he was fired last year.
Billie has been the target of a federal grand jury investigating embezzlement of tribal funds and theft of federal grant money. Cox and two other men were indicted in June on charges of conspiracy to steal $2.77-million from the tribe and launder it through a shell corporation in Belize.
The sick-pay lawsuit, filed in Broward Circuit Court in December, alleged that Billie and Cox falsified payroll records to generate $169,000 used to "buy the silence" of Christine O'Donnell, Cox's predecessor.
The lawsuit also claimed Billie and Cox conspired to divert $72,000 in unused sick time to Billie in violation of tribal rules.
O'Donnell, a 17-year, $100,000-a-year Seminole employee, maintains that Billie coerced her into frequent sexual relations, impregnated her, forced her to get an abortion, fired her and then paid her off with phony sick time.
O'Donnell's sexual harassment suit against Billie, still pending, formed part of the basis for the tribal council's unanimous vote to suspend Billie last year.
The tribe's lawsuit over the payment of "hush money" to O'Donnell says Billie and Cox falsified documents to give O'Donnell the severance package by giving her 2,764 hours of sick time when she was entitled to only one hour.
The settlement of the lawsuit calls for Billie to repay the tribe the $169,000 he directed be paid to O'Donnell.
"James Billie essentially said, 'I'll go ahead and take financial responsibility for amounts paid to O'Donnell,' " said tribal attorney Donald Orlovsky. "It is to be repaid under mutually agreeable terms."
When Billie will repay the tribe remains unclear. No deadline for repayment is established in the settlement, and the tribe agreed not to garnishee his tribal dividends or place a lien on any property Billie owns on reservation property.
As for the $72,000 in misappropriated sick time paid to Billie through Cox, the settlement calls for that amount to be deducted from Billie's annual leave time.
In the Raymond James lawsuit, the judge's decision to dismiss the case turned on Billie's "apparent authority" to act on critical investment decisions on behalf of the tribe.
In a federal complaint filed in Miami last September, the tribe claimed Billie lacked authority from the tribal council to move the Seminole stock portfolio to Raymond James broker Peter Ripich, a former Army buddy of Cox's.
After the transfer of the $30-million portfolio in February 2000, the lawsuit states, Ripich engaged in unauthorized day-trading of risky Internet stocks, borrowed heavily on margin and churned stocks extensively to earn huge commissions. As tech stocks plunged in value in the spring of 2001, the value of the tribe's portfolio fell by $20-million.
U.S. District Judge Federico A. Moreno found that Billie and Cox "were cloaked with apparent authority" to allow Ripich and Raymond James to take over the portfolio. His reasoning: The brokerage firm received a tribal treasurer's corporate resolutions for the change, and the tribal council gave no indication the account change was improper after it was opened. Moreno threw out the complaint and referred the Seminole dispute in the Raymond James matter to arbitration, as required by the client agreement between the brokerage house and the tribe.
The tribe has appealed the judge's ruling.