36-year-old Michael Anthony Houser has been sentenced to a total of 106 months in prison for one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and one count of tax fraud. In addition, he must pay $17,337,949.50 in restitution to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and $8,205,834.00 in restitution to the Internal Revenue Service.

Houser pled guilty to the charges levelled by the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma on February 20, 2025. An investigation by the FBI has revealed that the Oklahoma resident embezzled and obtained fraud property while working as a manager for the Muscogee Nation Gaming Enterprises.

“I am proud of the work conducted by our special agents in this case to ensure that justice was brought to the Muscogee (Creek) Nation,” said Special Agent in Charge Kyle Smith at the Oklahoma Field Office. “The US Secret Service at its origin was created to identify, monitor and bring to justice those who seek to defraud.

“Protecting our communities here in Oklahoma is a mission we take very seriously, and I am grateful for the strong partnership we share with the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation as we work together to bring fraudsters to justice.”

From theft to tax fraud

In doing so, Houser went on to embezzle $24,907,436.07 between July 2016 and February 2024, made up of funds owned by and under the control of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and its agencies, all of which are program that were receiving federal funds. This led to the theft charge.

In addition, Houser didn’t disclose the stolen funds as taxable income, leading to the second charge of tax fraud. In the 2022 tax year, Houser failed to report $7,851,027,28 in income, with his fraudulent tax filings amounting to $8,205,834.00.

“Stealing from the community you are entrusted to serve is a serious betrayal,” said Christopher J. Altemus Jr., Special Agent in Charge at the IRS Criminal Investigation Dallas Field Office. “Mr. Houser’s crimes harmed the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and undermined trust in public and tribal institutions.

“By stealing from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and falsifying his tax return, Mr. Houser not only defrauded his employer but also the American public. The women and men of IRS-CI are proud to have worked alongside the U.S. Secret Service and the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Oklahoma to uncover this fraud and hold Mr Houser accountable for his crimes.”

Being cash-based business, tribal gambling companies have formed the backdrop of tax fraud before, as with this case with the Mashpee tribe.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.5

The post Tribal gaming manager jailed for theft and fraud appeared first on Our Story Insight.

For decades, a little-known nonprofit organization has played a central role in keeping the lights on for 65 million people in the Eastern United States.

Even some governors and lawmakers acknowledge that they were not fully aware of how much influence the organization, PJM, has on the cost and reliability of energy in 13 states. The electrical grid it manages is the largest in the United States.

But now some elected leaders have concluded that decisions made by PJM are one of the main reasons utility bills have soared in recent years. They said the organization had been slow to add new solar, wind and battery projects that could help lower the cost of electricity. And they say the grid manager is paying existing power plants too much to supply electricity to their states.

Some governors have been so incensed that they have sued PJM, drafted or signed laws to force changes at the organization, or threatened to pull their states out of the regional electric grid.

The Democratic governors of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey and Pennsylvania sharply criticized the organization in recent interviews with The New York Times and in written statements. And the Republican governor of Virginia, Glenn Youngkin, called on the organization to fire its chief executive in a letter obtained by The Times.

“PJM has lost the plot,” Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said in an interview. In another interview, Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland said about PJM, “I am angry.”

The elected leaders — some of whom may run for president in 2028 — and their aides said PJM’s executives, board members and committees made many important decisions in secret. And too many decisions, like whether to make it easier or harder for new power projects to join the grid, effectively benefit established energy companies at the expense of residents and businesses that use electricity.

The governors’ fury at PJM is part of broader frustrations expressed by elected officials, residents and businesses over U.S. grids. After decades of modest and gradual rate increases, the price of power has climbed relentlessly over the last several years.

The cost of electricity for residents of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia has increased from 23 to 40 percent over the last five years.

Energy costs rose sharply after natural gas prices spiked when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. But electricity rates continued to climb after that shock because energy demand is growing rapidly, driven largely by new data centers.

In addition, power outages have become more frequent because utility equipment had been poorly maintained and was not upgraded for more intense natural disasters linked to climate change.

A spokesman for PJM said the organization was sensitive to the concerns of the governors but noted that it was regulated by a federal agency.

“The opinions of our governors are very important to PJM, and we share their concern about increasing electricity prices — a phenomenon occurring across much of our country,” said the spokesman, Jeffrey P. Shields. “PJM has no profit motive, no shareholders and no share price. We are fully regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and cannot make any major changes without that body’s approval.”

When it was formed in 1927, the organization was meant to connect the operations of three utilities in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Utilities in Maryland were later added, forming the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Maryland Interconnection, or PJM. Working together allowed the utilities to share resources, cutting costs.

The organization’s main job is to oversee the flow of energy over transmission lines that carry electricity from power plants to cities and towns. PJM also devises and enforces policies about when and which types of power plants are added to the grid.

Over nearly 100 years, the PJM grid has grown to encompass all or parts of 13 states and the District of Columbia, stretching roughly from Chicago to Virginia Beach.

PJM has a nine-member board of managers, all of whom have worked in the energy industry or in other senior corporate jobs. It also has more than 1,000 voting members, most of which are utilities, power plant companies, transmission line owners and energy traders.

Most of those voting members have a direct financial stake in the organization’s decisions. Members typically vote on policies and issues. Some of the meetings are public, but others, including smaller committee meetings where preliminary decisions are made, are not.

PJM is one of seven large U.S. grid operators. Each functions differently. Some are confined to single states like California and Texas, and their boards answer to state officials. California is considering expanding the authority of its grid manager to include other Western states under a PJM-style model.

Other grid managers function like PJM, as independent organizations that pick their own board members and chief executives with no input from governors.

“What the problem is at PJM is that it is controlled and influenced by the corporate energy companies that constitute its membership,” said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at Public Citizen, a nonprofit research and consumer group started by Ralph Nader. “It puts energy company lobbyists in the driver’s seat at PJM.”

Mr. Slocum added that the federal regulator that oversees PJM and other grid managers was too reactive to adequately police these organizations.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has long pushed PJM to reform and speed up approval of new sources of electricity like wind, solar and battery projects. But progress has been slow. Critics blame PJM for that, but the organization says permitting delays, financing challenges, government decisions and other factors are more to blame.

A spokeswoman for the federal agency said it could not comment because of pending regulatory matters.

But at a meeting last week, the agency’s chairman, Mark Christie, said reforms at PJM and other regional grids were overdue. He asked if the organizations had failed and should be replaced.

“For years I’ve been saying we are heading toward a reliability crisis,” Mr. Christie said. “The crisis is really now on our doorstep.”

A 2024 report by Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs concluded that PJM “has experienced the most severe delays and backlog in new generation — projects entering the queue today have little chance of coming online before 2030.”

The time it takes to add new sources of electricity is critical because demand for energy is growing rapidly. PJM’s territory includes northern Virginia, which has the country’s largest collection of data centers. Technology companies want to add many data centers in other PJM states, particularly Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Mr. Shields said PJM had reduced the backlog of power projects waiting to join its grid, recently approving new capacity that can serve 40 million homes.

In response to criticism of secrecy, he said that PJM holds more than 400 stakeholder meetings each year and that the vast majority are open to the public. And the organization makes documents available to the public on its website.

But many state officials said PJM existed mainly to benefit the utility industry.

Over the last three years as electricity rates rose sharply in Maryland, a state lawmaker, Lorig Charkoudian, a Democrat, pushed for legislation that would force utilities in her state to disclose their votes at PJM. Mr. Moore signed the bill into law last month.

Ms. Charkoudian said a handful of PJM states had drafted or were working on similar legislation.

In interviews, Governor Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Matt Meyer of Delaware — both Democrats — said they supported the legislation and were working on other efforts to reform PJM.

Other states have gone even further.

In December, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania sued PJM after the grid manager conducted an annual auction in which power plant owners submit the price they are offering to supply energy when demand surges, which often happens in summer. The prices set by the auction would have resulted in big price increases for electricity users. The highest bid in the auction contributes to the final price PJM sets for all generators, meaning even power plant owners willing to accept less money would be paid the higher prices.

The state and PJM reached a settlement that caps the price set by the auction. Mr. Shapiro said the deal would save Pennsylvanians $21 billion over two years.

“I do not think PJM is serving the good people of Pennsylvania well,” Mr. Shapiro said in email responses to questions. “We’ve got to re-examine whether or not Pennsylvania should be a member of PJM. We are a net energy exporter, meaning we create more energy than we actually need. That puts us in a strong position to both keep consumer prices low and also create markets in other states.”

Mr. Shields said the complaint had been supported by five of the six states affected by it. He said the settlement maintained the effectiveness of the existing market design while supporting reliability and affordability of the grid for consumers.

But the settlement angered at least one other governor.

In a February letter to the chairman of PJM’s board, Governor Youngkin of Virginia criticized PJM for not consulting other states before settling with Pennsylvania. He said the deal was part of the grid manager’s piecemeal approach to running its system that was driving up electricity costs. Mr. Youngkin also said the organization should fire its chief executive.

“Instead of seeking to resolve these fundamental issues through open and transparent dialogue with all states, including Virginia, as well as other stakeholders, PJM leadership negotiated a one-off deal with a single state that impacts rates for all PJM customers,” Mr. Youngkin wrote.

Mr. Shields said Mr. Youngkin withdrew the letter without formally submitting it to the full organization “at PJM’s request.”

Last month, PJM announced that its chief executive, Manu Asthana, would step down by year’s end. The organization said the decision had preceded Mr. Youngkin’s letter.

“We’re spending our time talking about the wrong things,” Mr. Asthana said in a statement. “Prices are up because of tightening supply and demand driven by generator retirements and data center growth, and it’s impacting consumers. We need to be working together on additional ways to bring supply onto the system rapidly.”

The post As Energy Costs Surge, Eastern Governors Blame a Grid Manager appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Tesla became the latest part of Elon Musk’s business empire to make it clear that criticism of the chief executive is unacceptable by firing a manager last month after he objected to a post on social media by Mr. Musk that referred to Nazi leaders.

Jared Ottmann, a manager and engineer who worked with Tesla’s battery suppliers, said he had been fired because he criticized Mr. Musk for a post on X that used the names of Nazis like Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Göring in a series of wordplay.

“Stop Göring your enemies,” Mr. Musk wrote on Jan. 23, adding, “Bet you did Nazi that coming.” He punctuated the post with a laughing-while-crying emoji.

Mr. Ottmann said on LinkedIn in late January that he was offended that Mr. Musk had referred “as a joke” to Nazis who were responsible for genocide.

“Starting in 2022 and especially the last week I’ve raised the issue internally multiple times, with managers, HR, legal compliance, investor relations,” Mr. Ottmann wrote, referring to behavior by Mr. Musk that he found objectionable. “And while overwhelmingly people offer personal support, Tesla as a company has remained silent.”

Tesla did not reply to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk’s companies, which include SpaceX and X, have a history of punishing dissent. In 2022, SpaceX, which makes rockets, fired nine employees who had called on the company to distance itself from social media comments by Mr. Musk, including one in which he mocked sexual harassment accusations against him. Some of those employees later filed unfair-labor-practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board.

Mr. Ottmann’s critical remarks, and Tesla’s reaction, are the latest indication of the disruption caused by Mr. Musk’s right-wing politics. He has supported a far-right party in Germany whose members have been fined by the government for using Nazi slogans. Mr. Musk’s role in the Trump administration as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency has also made him a polarizing figure.

Signs of dissent at Tesla have not been isolated to Mr. Ottmann. Last month during a meeting at Tesla’s offices in Palo Alto, Calif., employees vented their frustrations about Mr. Musk’s political activities, leading a manager to say he was also discouraged by the chief executive’s behavior.

Mr. Ottmann confirmed Thursday that he had been fired. He declined to comment further, referring questions to Jana Moser, a lawyer in Santa Monica, Calif. Ms. Moser did not reply to a request for comment.

This fall, a SpaceX employee was fired after writing on an internal message board that he hoped Mr. Musk would stop wearing company apparel during his campaign appearances for Mr. Trump, three people familiar with incident said. During an October rally in Butler, Pa., for example, Mr. Musk wore an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt — which SpaceX sells in its company store — as he jumped up and down onstage.

The employee wrote that it wouldn’t be appropriate for workers to wear political clothing to the office and, therefore, that company apparel should not be worn at campaign events. A few days after his post, the company revoked the employee’s access to internal systems, though it later reinstated the employee after determining there was no violation of company policies, the people said.

The employee resigned weeks later. SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Musk has also fired workers at X who criticized him. In the wake of his $44 billion takeover of the company, then called Twitter, in 2022, several employees posted critiques of the billionaire on the platform. Mr. Musk argued with some of them online, and they were later fired.

The firings are at odds with Mr. Musk’s often-stated goal to defend free speech. He has offered to fund lawsuits against employers who fire workers because of things they posted on X. In 2024, he funded a suit for a former worker at the payments company Block after she was fired for inflammatory posts she made on a pseudonymous X account.

Investors in Tesla, the only publicly traded company that Mr. Musk runs, are also worried that his political activities are alienating some buyers and that he is spending too much time in Washington and not enough time addressing slumping car sales. Shares of the company have declined about 40 percent from a high set on Dec. 17.

The post Tesla Fires a Manager Who Criticized Elon Musk on Social Media appeared first on Our Story Insight.