While those plans fizzled and securities fraud allegations dog him in Virginia, Hogan appears to be working with a new group of tribal members to develop their mineral rights.
Hogan represents tribal members who formed an organization called Raven Economic Development Services, or REDS, according to documents obtained by the Billings Gazette.
While the REDS statement doesn’t mention Hogan, Hogan’s name appears as a REDS representative on letters seeking funding and offering to buy other companies. A document Hogan distributed for his own project that was discredited as fraudulent has turned up in connection with the REDS project.
Hogan did not return a call seeking comment. REDS Chairman Grady Hunts Arrow also could not be reached for comment.
A former Crow tribal official and convicted felon, Hogan has a long history of promoting energy development on the reservation. As tribal secretary in the 1980s, he pushed coal projects. In recent years, Hogan promoted energy development through his consulting business, Theodore J. Hogan and Associates, and was designated by the Crow Tribe as its exclusive agent for securing development funding.
Hogan lives in Sedona, Ariz., where he also is known for giving talks on Indian culture and spirituality using the name Ted Kills In The Fog.
Hogan’s solicitations for investment in energy development several years ago generated investor complaints to federal officials and prompted the Crow Tribe to terminate its agreement with him.
A federal investigation into Hogan’s activities has not led to criminal charges, but the evidence has been used against him in two other cases.
Last year, a federal jury in Billings acquitted Hogan on charges that he lied about his finances to avoid paying restitution to the Crow Tribe. Hogan owed restitution from his 1990s convictions on conspiracy, bank fraud and embezzlement charges from a corruption scandal when he was director of the tribe’s housing authority.
The prosecutor tried to show that while Hogan claimed he had little money for restitution, he was receiving millions of dollars from individuals for minerals development and was giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to his family and tribal officials.
Hogan admitted that he had received about
$4.1 million from investors but denied any wrongdoing.
In Virginia, Hogan faces civil securities fraud allegations before the state Corporation Commission. A hearing examiner recommended in September that the commission find that Hogan and his company committed nine securities violations and that it impose $95,000 in penalties and collect more than $13,000 in investigative costs. The penalties could be waived if Hogan makes restitution.
The commission has not yet acted on the recommendation. Commission spokesman Kenneth Schrad said there is no deadline for the commission to issue an order.
If penalties are not paid, an outstanding judgment will remain against the defendant, he said.
“Most important, of course, is a directive, if possible, to return money to investors in full or in part,” Schrad said. Investors also may pursue a civil suit against the defendant to recover losses.
Hogan did not attend the hearing and tried unsuccessfully to postpone it, saying that he had no money and no lawyer, documents said.
The securities case was prompted by a complaint filed by Virginia residents Elaine and William Roulidis. The couple, along with William Roulidis’ brother, invested $62,000 with Hogan and his company in 2004.
Hogan had told William Roulidis about his oil and gas development venture on Indian lands, gave him documents and advised that he and his wife had only a limited time to invest because there were other interested investors. Elaine Roulidis entered into an agreement with Hogan in which she would get a 5 percent interest in a potential $360 million in commissions that Hogan expected to receive within six months to one year after development began on the Crow Reservation.
Hogan also sold the same 5 percent agreement to at least 40 other investors for various amounts of money, the report said.
Hogan has shown no remorse and made no effort at restitution, said Michael D. Thomas, the hearing examiner. Hogan used almost all of the Virginia investors’ money for his own use to “support a lavish lifestyle” that included giving his wife money for personal expenses and paying his credit card bills, he said.
Testimony in the case from Joe Waller, a special agent for the Department of Interior’s Office of Inspector General in Billings, discredited as fraudulent a geology report Hogan had given to investors. The report is a 2002 geology appraisal allegedly prepared by Prescott Underwood, of Underwood Geological Service in Sheridan, Wyo. Underwood swore in an affidavit that the report is fictitious and that he did not prepare, authorize or sign it, Waller testified.
The Underwood report appears on White Buffalo’s Web site, which provides information about its effort to raise money for coalbed methane development on 40,000 acres on the Crow Reservation. The site also lists a letter signed by Hogan and addressed “to whom it may concern” in which Hogan talks about minerals appraisals and said REDS is seeking money for energy projects.
White Buffalo spokesman Brad Greenberg of Charlotte, N.C., confirmed that White Buffalo is representing REDS but said it is not working with Hogan, although Hogan may represent REDS in some other way.
Greenberg and his two partners formed White Buffalo Holdings earlier this year, he said.
“Our job is strictly to help provide funding for them. All we’re trying to do is help these people,” he added. “It’s going very well.”
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