By Staff Reports
TAHLEQUAH, Okla. — Internal records show a person with direct knowledge of the finances of the United Keetoowah Band of Cherokee Indians in Oklahoma warned as early as April 2026 that the tribe faced a cash shortfall in its federal relief funds.
This outlet is withholding the source’s identity because disclosure could expose the person to retaliation and because the information could not be obtained any other way.
In an April email, the source wrote that money charged to the tribe’s American Rescue Plan Act account, known as ARPA, along with several other federal funding accounts, could not be covered by the funds available in those accounts. The source named the affected accounts as ARPA, Indirect Cost, Lighthorse, the Community Development Corporation, Child Care and Development Fund, Keetoowah Cherokee Development Corporation, and Tribal Historic Preservation, along with environmental funds running low. Those charges, the source wrote, typically added up to between $60,000 and $100,000 each week and had to be issued instead to the tribe’s General Fund.
The same shortfall hit payroll, according to the source. ARPA funds were charged for staff salaries, but insufficient funds in the account meant $120,000 to $150,000 of a typical $250,000 payroll had to be drawn from the General Fund instead.
The source has said she notified Tribal Council and tribal administration of the ARPA shortfall by email and that she received no response.
The source’s account aligns with what UKB Comptroller Meosha Rambo told Tribal Council on July 15. Rambo, hired April 13, said the tribe relied on ARPA funds to cover payroll and operating costs while awaiting separate federal reimbursements, and that the funding was never intended to last indefinitely. When it ran out, she said, a deeper cash shortage came into view, leading to furloughs.
The April email predates Rambo’s July 15 public account by more than three months.
If the April communication accurately reflected the tribe’s financial position, it indicates personnel handling the tribe’s accounts were identifying cash-flow problems months before the issue was discussed publicly at Council. The records reviewed by this outlet do not establish what action, if any, was taken in response to the source’s outreach to Council and administration.
A second source, whose identity is also being withheld, described a different contributing factor: outstanding legal invoices as high as $800,000, with more than $1 million paid on legal invoices within less than a year, and remaining depleted funds spent on travel. No invoices, expense reports, or financial statements have been produced to this outlet to support those figures, and no tribal official has addressed the claim on the record.
The question of UKB Chief Jeff Wacoche and UKB Secretary Caleb Grimmitt-Smith travel costs surfaced publicly before this reporting began. Earlier in the June 6 Council meeting, UKB Sequoyah District Representative Donald Adair read complaints from Members describing UKB officers and directors who do not return phone calls, and questions about who approves the Secretary’s travel, what it costs, and what it has produced for the tribe.
Chief Wacoche, who presides over Council meetings under the band’s By-Laws, cut the report short. “We get your point,” he said, then asked Adair, “Do you have any more complaints to read?” He told Members to consult the UKB Facebook page, and Adair to gollow a Council text thread, and email summaries from the Attorney General for travel information. “You just gotta read your emails, sir,” he said. He did not state travel costs or approval details at the meeting.Despitr Adair stating they were member concerns.
UKB Secretary Caleb Grimmett-Smith did not address the concerns at the meeting. The Council, made up of nine district representatives and four officers elected at large, is the band’s supreme governing body under Constitution.
The questions Adair raised about Chief/Secretary travel were not answered at the June 6 meeting.
Wacoche has served in UKB tribal leadership since January 2019, first as Tahlequah District Representative, then as Assistant Chief beginning January 2021, then as Chief beginning January 2025. At that same June 6 meeting, Wacoche told Treasurer Sonja Gourd that accurate monthly financial reporting “has not happened over the past six years.”
He did not explain during the July 15 meeting whether any corrective action had been attempted before the financial problems became public.
No tribal official has publicly commented on the internal records reviewed by this outlet.
