This story was originally published by the Louisiana Illuminator.
Natalie McLendon
Lousiana Illuminator
A Louisiana tribal casino is under the scrutiny of at least two federal agencies, according to documents the Illuminator has obtained and a former casino purchasing manager who says authorities have interviewed her twice about the matter.
The probe involves Jonathan Cernek, former chairman of the Coushatta Tribe, who federal regulators allege used a casino business credit card to build and furnish his personal home. A former tribal official said the controversy has raised questions about fairness and accountability over how leaders spend casino proceeds intended to benefit all its members.
The National Indian Gaming Commission ordered the Coushatta Tribal Gaming Commission last month to suspend the license of Todd Stewart, the casino’s former general manager and chief financial officer, because of an alleged failure to report suspected misuse of gaming revenues during Cernek’s tenure. The federal commission ordered the tribe to hold a revocation hearing for Stewart, which took place Oct. 15 according to the tribe’s spokesperson. The tribe’s gaming commission has not ruled on the status of Stewart’s license.
Claims of Cernek’s credit card misuse are outlined in an eight-page statement Stewart provided to the Coushatta Tribal Council last year. The Illuminator has obtained a copy of the letter. Although he initially did not respond to questions from a reporter, Stewart confirmed via email Tuesday that he wrote the statement.
Dated Aug. 14, 2024, Stewart’s statement details events dating back to November 2023. They include Stewart’s discovery of invoices for deliveries to the home of Cernek and his wife, Mandy, citing “bathroom fixtures” as an example.
Stewart wrote that he reported the purchases to other members of the tribe’s leadership council and eventually confronted Cernek about the credit card spending. In response, Stewart alleged in his statement that the former chairman threatened his job.
Stewart also wrote that he spoke with former casino purchasing manager Paula Corliss about Cernek’s credit card use. She explained the account was for community goodwill purchases, such as air conditioning units for tribal elders and gift baskets for graduating tribal members, according to Stewart.
In his statement, Stewart said Corliss confirmed “there were at least a few instances where Mandy Cernek placed orders [using the credit card] with product delivered to the Cernek residence.”
In a recent interview with the Illuminator, Corliss confirmed these details, adding that she believed “nothing was hidden” about the Cerneks’ use of the casino credit card.
“It was there for him [Stewart] to see, for the council to see, everybody in finance,” Corliss said. “It was there. You could see it. No one addressed it with the chairman. No one, and Todd said he would handle it.”
Jonathan and Mandy Cernek did not respond to phone or text messages requesting an interview, nor did the Cerneks respond to a list of questions the Illuminator hand-delivered to their home in Calcasieu Parish.
Stewart initially did not respond to phone or email messages. After a reporter hand-delivered a letter with a list of specific questions to Stewart’s residence in Henderson, Nevada, on Sept. 27, he sent a brief email statement.
“Throughout my tenure with the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, I have discharged the duties of my position with professional integrity and have worked with the stakeholders for the betterment of the Coushatta Casino Resort. That has defined my tenure,” Stewart wrote.
Corliss told the Illuminator the FBI questioned her in person in late May 2024 about Coushatta Casino’s finances. She also said she spoke with someone from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs over the phone in late October 2024.
The tribe’s current chairman, David Sickey, and tribal council members Crystal Williams and Kristian Poncho did not respond to phone and text message requests for interviews for this report. The tribe’s public relations representative, Mary Patricia Wray, did not respond to an emailed list of questions.
In response to a list of questions about the Coushatta Tribe, the FBI said it is limiting its responses to the news media during the federal government shutdown. Typically, as a matter of policy, the FBI neither confirms nor denies the status of its investigations.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs did not respond to questions about its involvement with the Coushatta Tribe. Its website indicates the agency’s services are impacted in the ongoing shutdown.
The National Indian Gaming Commission has previously said it does “not comment on ongoing investigations, or potential investigations.”
Tribe awaits explanation
Jonas John, the Coushatta Tribe’s former heritage and cultural department director, said he clashed with the former chairman over financial matters before Cernek forced him from his role. It happened two years ago after John said he spoke out about a dormant tribal museum project. He said he was given a termination notice and told he could either resign or be fired.
“This was direct from [former] Chairman Cernek and his administrator, Chris Langley,” John told the Illuminator.
John said he asked for a reason for his termination, and human resources told him they wanted a change and no longer needed his services.
“I was shocked due to the fact I have given so much to our tribe in revitalization of tribal culture, which people still benefit [from] today …” John said. “Sometimes, if you start questioning our department’s grant money and tribal issues, this is what happens.”.
“We built the casino to help our people and the local community grow, but that takes honesty and good leadership,” John said.
John said tribal community meetings with its leadership are infrequent, and there has been no public explanation from the tribal council about the alleged credit card misuse or other financial issues.
“Our museum has never been developed,” John said. “There’s a $13 million building back there that there is nothing accountable for, and I wanted accountability. I asked, ‘Where did these funds go? Why is our museum like a skeleton?’ You know, it’s just there.”
John said many members want to replace the bylaws that govern the Coushatta Tribe.
“We need a constitution that will prevent people from stealing and misusing funds,” he said. “Without that, nothing changes.”
The Coushatta Tribe is a federally recognized sovereign nation with more than 900 enrolled members. Its casino is under federal and state oversight, with its operations defined in a tribal-state compact. That agreement establishes the tribe’s reporting, financial oversight and regulatory obligations the tribe must follow to maintain its gaming license.
The National Indian Gaming Commission regulates and monitors all tribal casinos through the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act of 1988. It issued the order to suspend Stewart’s license after investigating a complaint from an unspecified source about Cernek’s misusing casino revenues, according to a notice the federal agency sent to Pam Bass, chairwoman of the Coushatta Tribal Gaming Commission.
Like Louisiana’s other tribal casinos, the Coushatta have their own gaming commission that serves as the establishment’s primary state regulator. But its members must report investigations, disciplinary actions and compliance data to the Louisiana State Police.
State Police can enforce state and federal laws and investigate violations that occur in connection with the Coushatta Casino Resort, according to a compact between the state and the tribe. State Police are required to share their investigation reports with the tribe, according to the compact that applies only to the tribe’s gaming operations, not its governmental affairs.
There was no response from State Police to questions for this report before publication.
Tribes must keep six years of independent audits and must provide audit and accounting records to State Police for review or copying upon request. It was these casino audits that first brought to light issues with Cernek’s alleged credit card spending.
Last month, the Louisiana Legislative Auditor published a report from one of the independent audits that indicated the Coushatta tribe’s leadership did not keep track of credit card use, with no receipts to show for purchases totaling more than $100,000 over a two-month spending period in 2024 that was reviewed.
Shawna Castellano, a regional director with the National Indian Gaming Commission, wrote in the Sept. 8 order calling for Stewart’s license to be pulled that an audit confirmed claims made in the complaint filed with the commission.
The Coushatta audit from 2024 – which was recently published on the Louisiana Legislative Auditor’s website, removed, and then republished – cited prior findings from a two-month sampling of credit card purchases in 2023. It found 338 transactions totaling $111,697 with no receipts.
Statement reveals discrepancies
Stewart’s written statement to the Coushatta Tribal Council provides his version of events surrounding Jonathan Cernek’s credit card use.
In late January and early February 2024 meetings, Stewart said Corliss told him that, on one occasion, one of the casino’s purchasing credit cards was flagged by the bank for suspicious activity, and she ordered a replacement. Not long after receiving the new credit card, it was missing from her desk, Stewart wrote, adding that Corliss suspected Cernek had entered her office after hours to take it.
Corliss told Stewart the former chairman had a master key, according to Stewart’s statement.
“Soon after I instructed Paula to cancel the purchasing credit card, she called me to advise that there was no need to cancel the credit card as The [former] Chairman had physically returned it,” Stewart wrote.
Corliss confirmed this claim with the Illuminator, stating that Cernek took the card in more than one instance, and sometimes sent her a text message afterward to say he had the card before returning it.
In his email Tuesday to the Illuminator, Stewart said an earlier report mischaracterized the situation.
“Contrary to your previous reporting, my statement opens with a clear knowledge of those in possession of credit cards,” he wrote.
According to Stewart’s statement to the Coushatta Tribal Council, he met with Kristian Poncho, the Coushatta Tribe’s secretary-treasurer, in mid-February 2024 to discuss Cernek’s credit card spending. Stewart told Poncho “any potential ‘bleeding’ had been stopped and we were therefore dealing with historical activity that had already occurred.”
At the time, Stewart wrote, he was focused on reaching a credit agreement with Wells Fargo for a $150 million casino renovation and hotel expansion project. He was also finalizing a related contract with Yates Construction and his work on the 2023 audit, which would later raise concerns about missing receipts.
By Feb. 21, 2024, Stewart and his team briefed the Coushatta Tribal Council on the casino’s finances. The Wells Fargo deal closed March 11, and the Yates contract followed on March 27. Expansion work began at the resort that month.
The 2023 audit, Stewart wrote, was finalized and issued on April 25, 2024, with “no significant or material deficiencies reported.”
According to Castellano’s notice to the Coushatta Tribe last month, the National Indian Gaming Commission interviewed Stewart this past June and learned he did not “disclose suspected fraud to the external auditors during the [fiscal year] 2023 annual audit of the financial statements.”
Stewart also didn’t discuss the matter with “the potential lender of a $150 million construction loan the Coushatta Casino was in the process of obtaining” until the loan was actually secured, Castellano wrote.
“The audited financial statements for the period ending December 31, 2023, and 2024 were issued by the external auditors with an unqualified (clean) opinion,” Stewart told the Illuminator this week.
‘A tensity in the air’
Stewart also said in his written statement to the Coushatta Tribal Council that Jonathan Cernek asked him to join him for dinner alone on April 30, 2024, at Simon’s Bar & Grill, on an out-of-the-way stretch of Highway 397 southeast of Lake Charles.
“We met at an isolated venue …” Stewart wrote. “There was a tensity in the air when we begin to interact, and I struggled to carry the conversation for over an hour.”
Stewart wrote that their conversation remained strained until Cernek suddenly asked why Stewart had been “asking people how a chairman can be impeached.”
Stewart explained that a tribal elder had accused the Cerneks of stealing from the tribe and that he was only trying to figure out his own job security, according to the statement.
The chairman told Stewart that he “had had his back” many times and wanted to know that he was loyal, according to Stewart’s statement.
Cernek resigned without explanation as tribal chairman Aug. 9, 2024, less than a week before Stewart prepared his statement for the Coushatta Tribal Council.
“It appears that there is an attempt to hold me, the non-tribal member, accountable for the inappropriate actions of the Chairman, a Tribal member,” Stewart wrote to the Illuminator this week.
When the Illuminator reported last month on the audit findings, Wray said the tribal council had eliminated its purchasing credit cards and adopted a formal expense reporting and reimbursement policy.
The Coushatta Tribal Gaming Commission was given 45 days to hold a hearing on Stewart’s license revocation and report back to the National Indian Gaming Commission on its decision.
On his LinkedIn page, Stewart listed this past Sept. 7 as his last day as general manager at Coushatta Casino Resort.
This report was updated to include the status of Todd Stewart’s license revocation hearing.
Correction: This report was updated to clarify which audits revealed credit card misuse.