She added that she doesn’t believe anyone else with the tribe reports money that they owe to the tribe, either. “ Since tribal members have always been told by their attorneys and the council that these laws over the reservation don’t apply, It’s been very confusing.”

“According to federal law, if you have a loan and do not disclose it on a loan application for the bank, it’s like a big fraud because you might be denied the loan if they knew,” she said.īut, she said, the tribe and its staff always believed that tribal finances were a separate issue because of Indian sovereignty and such information did not have to be reported. She told the Free Press she had little choice but to plead guilty because crucial records she needed for her defense were unavailable and that she did not really believe any of the charges were justified.įour of the counts in the original indictment were for allegedly making false statements on loan applications, not reporting as outstanding loans the payroll advances she had received, which reportedly totaled $274,537 over a period from January 1996 to November 1999. She was sentenced in June to five months in federal prison and five months of home detention. Knight-Frank originally pleaded not guilty to all 11, but agreed in March of this year to plead guilty to the one count.Īt that time she also resigned as tribal chairman, a post she had held since 2001 and also from 1989-98. Knight-Frank, now 60, was indicted in 2002 on 11 charges stemming from payroll advances she received from the tribe and related matters. “It was the way the tribe operated,” she said. In an exclusive interview with the Free Press on July 29, she said she was unfairly singled out for prosecution just for doing things that were common practice on the reservation. Facing prison on a federal charge falsifying a tax return, former Ute Mountain Ute Tribal Chairman Judy Knight-Frank says her experience at the hands of the federal government has been a bitter one.

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