Lobbyist Accused of Swindling

In a scheme they dubbed “gimme five,” Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff and a partner created shell organizations and overcharged their tribal clients millions of dollars by grossly inflating their services and expenses, according to new documents released Wednesday by a Senate committee.

In 2001 alone, Abramoff’s partner, Michael Scanlon, billed the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians $7.7 million for various projects. Of that amount, Scanlon spent $1.2 million on the projects, while he and Abramoff split $6.5 million, Indian Affairs Committee Chairman John McCain said, citing an e-mail from Abramoff to Scanlon.

Over several years, the Choctaw paid Scanlon a total of $15 million, according to documents uncovered by the committee. Scanlon secretly paid $5 million of that to Abramoff, the documents showed.

Tribal officials said at the hearing that they never knew that Abramoff, their longtime lobbyist who had recommended that they hire Scanlon as a consultant, was getting paid by Scanlon.

“Never did [Abramoff and Scanlon] reveal that together they set prices to account for Mr. Abramoff’s stake in the profits,” McCain said. “Never did they even hint that the two devoted a small fraction of the payments to the uses intended by the tribe, pocketing the rest.”

Abramoff was once one of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, boasting of his close ties to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas). He now is under investigation by the Indian Affairs Committee and a federal grand jury for his and Scanlon’s financial dealings with several tribes, including the Choctaw. Scanlon is a former press secretary for DeLay.

Abramoff also has come under scrutiny for lavish overseas trips he arranged for DeLay and other members of Congress. Both DeLay and Abramoff have insisted that the trips did not violate ethics rules.

Abramoff has said that the fees he charged the tribes were not out of line, given the services he rendered. Democrats and congressional watchdog groups paint him as an extreme example of a lobbying culture they say is out of control in a town where one party -- the Republicans -- holds the White House and dominates Congress.

McCain, however, laid the blame squarely on Abramoff. “Today’s hearing is about more than contempt, even more than greed,” McCain said. “It is simply and sadly a tale of betrayal” by Abramoff of his clients, colleagues and friends.

Sen. Byron L. Dorgan of North Dakota, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said Scanlon and Abramoff used what he called a “mind-boggling list of organizations ... as financial and grass-roots conduits” for the money they took in from the tribes, then paid themselves excessive fees or, unbeknown to the tribes, funded causes unrelated to tribal interests. Abramoff, for instance, financed a Jewish religious school that he founded and paramilitary operations mounted by Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

“The goal was always the same: to hide, obscure and mislead where the money was coming from and where it was going,” Dorgan said.

He said he believed Abramoff may have tried to evade paying taxes by funneling some of his income to the Capitol Athletic Foundation, the lobbyist’s private charity. The group, which was supposed to fund sports activities for inner-city youth, “seemed also to serve as [Abramoff’s] personal piggy bank,” Dorgan said.

Andrew Blum, a spokesman for Abramoff, said in a statement issued Wednesday: “With an ongoing political investigation being directed by the U.S. Senate and an investigation by the Department of Justice, Mr. Abramoff is put into the impossible position of not being able to defend himself in the public arena until the proper authorities have had a chance to review all the accusations.

“Mr. Abramoff hopes that those who are quick to judge him now will remember that there are two sides to every event and that the media can condemn someone before he ever has a chance to right the record,” Blum said.

Two former Abramoff associates who worked with him at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig -- Kevin Ring and Shawn Vasell -- appeared before the committee but refused to testify, invoking their constitutional right against self-incrimination.

The committee questioned Vasell about how Abramoff billed the tribes and whether any time charged to the tribes was fabricated, as some e-mails between Abramoff and Vasell indicated. It questioned Ring about charging the Choctaw for his club dues and other issues.

Another witness was Nell Rogers, the Choctaw official who dealt directly with Scanlon and approved millions of dollars in payments.

“I’m past anger and bitterness,” Rogers told the committee. Abramoff’s dealings with the Choctaw were “an extraordinary story of betrayal after deliberately building trust,” she said.

The Choctaw, a tribe that owns and operates a casino and other industries in Mississippi and is one of the state’s largest employers, hired Abramoff in 1995 to help the tribe fend off a move in Congress to make tribal income subject to federal taxes.

That effort was successful, and the tribe continued to use Abramoff to represent its interests in Washington and fight efforts in neighboring states to legalize gambling -- moves the Choctaw feared would threaten their own Silver Star Hotel and Casino.

In e-mail exchanges released Wednesday, Abramoff and Scanlon discussed ways of convincing the tribes that they were working harder for them than they really were, and that they needed ever-higher payments.

“I think you should call [Rogers] and tell her that we have turned the corner but you are pouring it on to make sure we win,” Abramoff told Scanlon in one e-mail about how to get more money from the Choctaw.

“Tell her as of now you are finally willing to say that we will win this, but laughingly say: ‘I don’t know how I am going to get back all the money I had to dump into this.’ That will set her up for a discussion about payments.”

Again and again, in their e-mail exchanges, Abramoff and Scanlon refer to “gimme five,” the code phrase they used to describe their secret partnership. When Scanlon would pitch his services to a client, Abramoff would remind him, “don’t forget the gimme five aspects.”

McCain said the committee’s findings suggested Abramoff may have committed mail and wire fraud, and may also have bilked non-tribal clients of money for fees and services, although he offered no details of who those non-tribal clients might may be.

Wednesday’s hearing was the committee’s third since six Indian tribes last year alleged misconduct by either Abramoff, Scanlon or both.

Scanlon and Abramoff appeared at earlier hearings called by McCain, but exercised their constitutional right to refuse to answer questions on the grounds that doing so could incriminate them.

Six tribes together paid at least $66 million to Scanlon for his services, and he secretly paid almost $22 million of that to Abramoff, according to documents collected by the committee.

Wednesday’s testimony sometimes elicited laughter from the audience, as when a former lifeguard, David Grosh, said he was hired by Scanlon to head the American International Center, or AIC, an entity founded by Scanlon that operated out of the first floor of Grosh’s beach home in Rehoboth Beach, Del.

The Choctaw contributed to the group, giving it $1 million.

Grosh recounted how Scanlon, whom Grosh said he had known since he was 14, asked him whether he wanted to be “the head of an international corporation -- hard one to turn down,” Grosh said.

When he asked Scanlon what he would have to do if he took the position, “He said, ‘Nothing,’ ” Grosh recalled.

Grosh said that as far as he knew, AIC -- described on its website as “a public policy research foundation founded in 2001 under the high-powered directorship of David A. Grosh and Brian J. Mann” -- performed no work. Asked by McCain whether AIC ever held a board meeting, Grosh said: “I recall one; it lasted 15 minutes.”

The group in April 2003 paid almost $1 million to a company owned by Abramoff, McCain said documents showed.

Mann, a yoga instructor, refused to testify, citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

In other testimony, Amy Moritz Ridenour, chief executive of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said that on two occasions her conservative think tank, at Abramoff’s instruction, passed large sums of money from Abramoff’s clients to charities and companies he designated.

The first time, Abramoff instructed Ridenour to bill the Choctaw $1 million to launch an educational program on behalf of the tribe early in 2003.

Abramoff, a member of the center’s board of directors, then told her to disburse the money to three entities: his private charity, a company owned by Scanlon and another owned by Ralph Nurnberger. She learned later, Ridenour said, that the $50,000 Abramoff told her to give Nurnberger repaid a loan he had made to Abramoff years earlier when Abramoff was a filmmaker.

Later in 2003, Abramoff’s law firm, Greenberg Traurig, sent $1.5 million to the center that Ridenour said she thought came from the Choctaw but learned later came from an Internet gambling company. Abramoff told her to disburse that money as a grant to his private charity and to a corporation she said she learned last year that Abramoff owned. The company, Kaygold, is operated out of Abramoff’s home; he is its sole director.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Greenberg Traurig noted that it had fired Abramoff more than a year ago.

“While at the firm, he appears to have participated and directed egregious practices, detailed at today’s hearing by Sen. McCain. We share others’ outrage at this misconduct, which is antithetical to our firm’s culture and values.”

Times staff writer Walter F. Roche Jr. contributed to this report.