State: Seminoles may have lost millions

TAMPA -- An audit of finances at the Seminole Tribe of Florida has raised questions about tens of millions of dollars that may have left the country secretly for Nicaragua and gone down the drain in risky Wall Street investments.

The questions focus on Timothy W. Cox, 31, a former Georgia law enforcement officer handpicked by Seminole Chairman James E. Billie to oversee the tribe's multimillion-dollar finances. Cox went to work for the tribe after he lost his police certification for lying.

The office of Seminole General Counsel Jim Shore is trying to determine if Cox used as much as $4-million in tribal money in a secret hotel deal he put together in Nicaragua and if Cox had approval for stock trades resulting in millions more in losses.

"Things were being handled kind of loose around here," Shore said Monday. "We need to determine if there was any justification for these investments."

Preliminary results of the outside audit indicate Cox may have racked up millions in losses with trades through Peter T. Ripich, a broker at Raymond James & Associates who was "his Army buddy," Shore said.

Cox, who has a master's degree in social administration and was considered a quick study in finance, began doing what amounted to day-trading in stocks in February 2000 with Billie's blessings, Shore said.

At the time, many stocks were racing to all-time highs. A few weeks later, the bottom fell out of Internet stocks, taking high-flying tech stocks -- and some Seminole investments -- down with them.

"We're not sure he had authority to do that trading" said Shore, adding that a lawsuit might be needed to settle the matter.

The tribal trading account was marked "In care of Tim Cox" at Raymond James & Associates' office in Coral Gables, and handled by Ripich, 35, who joined the firm as a broker in September 1998. Ripich voluntarily resigned from Raymond James in April and is now an associate vice president of investments at another firm in Coral Gables.

Ripich left Raymond James with two customer complaints against him still pending, according to records with the non-profit North American Securities Administrators Association. Both complaints involve investors who complained about unauthorized trades in excess of $5,000.

Ripich was out of his office Monday and could not be reached for comment.

The St. Petersburg Times also was unable to reach Cox at his home in Plantation.

Cox, 32, the $170,000-a-year Seminole government operations manager, was fired May 10, a victim of growing tribal discontent with tribal spending policies.

Tribal members complained about a consulting deal Cox made to take $500,000 from the Cordish Co., a Baltimore developer with whom Cox was negotiating details of a $400-million plan to build Hard Rock Cafe casino-hotels in Hollywood and Tampa.

Later, tribal members learned of a secret deal Cox had made to buy a four-story hotel in Nicaragua, and an exclusive franchise he secured to open a Hard Rock Live restaurant in the Managua hotel. Shore called Cox's sideline deals "a flat-out conflict of interest."

The Seminole Tribal Council ordered a forensic audit of tribal finances in March, about the same time it began to display an open defiance of Billie, 57, the tribe's elected chairman since 1979.

Tribal council members voted down a move to freeze tribal spending, then unanimously shot down Billie's plan to spend $50-million for a new corporate jet only a few seats larger than the Gulfstream IV already in a tribal hangar.

Then, on May 24, the tribal council voted to suspend Billie and take him off the tribal payroll until the special audit was complete and a federal sexual harassment suit filed against Billie by former tribal director of administration Christine O'Donnell was resolved.

Billie filed a federal lawsuit last week to get his job back.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk