This group seems distinct from both the Southern Cherokee Nation and the Southern Cherokee of KY. They slam the former group specifically with this statement.
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http://southerncherokeeok.com/news.html....Gary W. Ridge, an admitted non-Indian, started the Southern Cherokee con in 1988 along with the First Nation campground. This con is being run in every state, as stated by one of Ridge's own judges with his Neetribe in North Carolina, by at least 260 so-called bands or branch offices. An investigation was started in 2004 by Principal Chief Andrew D. Light who worked with Paul Boyd, US Postal Service investigator, beginning in 2005. During the investigation, he met twice here in Oklahoma with Ken Voghts of the US Treasury Department and Linda Sweet, an IRS agent specializing in tribal government affairs. He also worked closely with Assistant US District Attorney Linda Epperly in Muskogee and furnished her with boxes of evidence for possible prosecutions in all the wrongdoing uncovered during his investigation. Epperly ended up refusing to pursue these criminals. Mr. Light was later told by Paul Boyd that all evidence gathered by Mr. Light, instead of being used as was intended or returned to him, was handed over to one of these cons out of Missouri, run by Johnny Gray and Stevie Matthews, on the order of a County Judge. They also received evidence seized by Boyd under the execution of a federal warrant on the office of Gary W. Ridge here in Oklahoma and a "branch office" in Louisiana. Gray and Matthews had nothing whatsoever to do with the investigation. There are phony cards being issued in the name of the Southern Cherokee nationwide. These cons have become a multi-million dollar industry and the federal goverment is fully aware of it.
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Leaders of the SCOK.
I did break up the paragraphs of Light's statement to make it easier to follow.
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Jerry G. Light has been elected to the position of Peacemaker of the Southern Cherokee Nation. Mr. Light has been studying Indian law and its applications for our tribe for some time now....
The next meeting of the Council of the Southern Cherokee Nation will be held at the tribal headquarters in Webbers Falls, Oklahoma in May, 2013 with the specific date to be named at a later time....
If you wish to contact the Council, you may mail any questions, comments or issues that need to be addressed c/o Council to:
SOUTHERN CHEROKEE NATION
P.O. BOX 581
WEBBERS FALLS, OK 74470
The names of the newly elected Council will not be listed due to harrassment and threats made to these members through the public listing of their names on this website. Any tribal member wishing to contact their Council members may do so by email through the website.
In the 2011 election of the officers of the Southern Cherokee Nation , Andrew D. Light was elected to the position of Principal Chief of the Southern Cherokee Nation. In his position as Principal Chief, he continues to work with numerous federal agencies as he has for the last four years in an attempt to put an end to the scams and cons being forwarded in the name of the Southern Cherokee Nation....
STATEMENT OF PRINCIPAL CHIEF ANDREW D. LIGHT
We are the elected government of the Southern Cherokee, so chosen in a special election....We are not the only Southern Cherokee Indians but we are the only legal government of the Southern Cherokee Nation. I started this investigation in 2004 as a Deputy Marshal despite objections from then-Marshal Johnny Gray, Steve Matthews and many others. Johnny Gray, his daughter Delilah, his niece Gilda Tyler, his nephew William Tyler and Steve Matthews, a cousin, from the taped minutes from the council meeting of June 2006, knew they were all appointed to council only until the election in 2007.
...After their resignations, they have proclaimed themselves to be the Council of the Southern Cherokee, operating out of a so-called Branch Office of the Southern Cherokee they set up in Newburg, Missouri.
...There have been complaints filed against this group in Missouri to the Missouri Attorney General and numerous prosecutors in Missouri for the cons they have run in that state but Missouri refuses to take any action to protect Missouri citizens from this con.
During the federal civil case against Ridge and associates, Gray and Matthews were plaintiffs/witnesses against Ridge but were running their own con and then were performing bogus Cherokee funerals with power of attorney and donations for the Southern Cherokee Nation branch office in Missouri along with Charles Wilcox. Wilcox is from the Ridge con and is not a Southern Cherokee.
Gray and Matthews are even enrolling persons through their "branch office" who they specifically turned down in the past because they were not Southern Cherokee. There is one group of 80+ enrollment files, submitted to our office here in Oklahoma, which were returned due to the fact that they were not Southern Cherokee. These parties, related to John Gray, are now enrolled with the Missouri bunch even though John Gray himself had stated that they may be his relatives but they are not Southern Cherokee.
None of the so-called Council or Committee members now listed for this group have ever even been to a meeting here in Oklahoma other than the five afore-mentioned persons that set this con up. We have a registered letter from Gray and Matthews stating that their so-called Council had a trial behind locked doors in Rolla, Missouri.
....Gray and Matthews even went so far as to attempt to withdraw our opposition (an opposition they supported prior to their resignations) to the trademark filed by Michael Buley of Kentucky for the name Southern Cherokee Nation in return for their partial use of the name if he was successful. They undertook this action even after having been told by Shirley Taylor that Buley was not a Southern Cherokee and had only been enrolled in the Ridge con based on collateral evidence and under the constant urging to do so by Ridge and Will and Judy Gunier. If you check the websites of Ridge and Buley through the internet archive found at
http://www.archive.org/index.php, you will find that parties previously associated in the Ridge con have now also moved into the Buley con.
Gray has stated that he has Missouri Highway Patrol officers, prosecutors and judges in his pocket. After seeing the influence a small-town ex-mayor here in Oklahoma can exert over county and state officials, he very well may have. The state of Oklahoma doesnt recognize the Southern Cherokee, yet Gary Ridge is allowed to continue to sell hunting/fishing licenses, thousands of dollars worth of car tags and registrations and has incorporations from here in Oklahoma to North Carolina along with setting up these cons for bonds and grants with kickbacks on them...
I have worked with Paul Boyd, Postal Inspector in the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, for over 3 years, thus far resulting in federal confiscations both here in Oklahoma and Louisiana. His investigation has been turned over to Linda Epperley, Assistant U.S. District Attorney in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In addition, I have worked with many U.S. District Attorneys and Assistant U.S. District Attorneys in other states, agents with the IRS and Treasury Departments and the BIA, just to name a few, as well as city, county and state officials all over the country. Numerous persons have provided evidence in this investigation to the criminal acts being committed nationwide in the name of the Southern Cherokee and other tribal names. The only involvement of Gray and Matthews in these investigations was to interfere and run their own cons, to lie, cheat and steal and to present evidence they had nothing to do with obtaining....
Now we have an Oklahoma State District Judge abrogating federal treaty rights and, in the words of Judge Carl Robinson, he and a group of lawyers in a civil case might have to decide who the real Southern Cherokee are. This was his statement on April 8, 2008 in state court in the case of Dynamic Gaming v. Southern Cherokee Nation, after denying the Southern Cherokee the right to represent themselves in state court yet Mr. Lewis can represent the Ridge con as Southern Cherokee at the same time. This also came after the Judge granted a Motion to Intervene to non-tribal members who are not residents of Oklahoma, let alone of the Canadian District. This is also the same judge that in 2005 refused to hear an eviction case against Gary Ridge and associates, claiming lack of jurisdiction, a jurisdiction he now claims and even extends to deciding treaty rights.
Dynamic Gaming, Gary Ridge and C.J. Perme have been involved with several gambling boats and a $7,000,000 land deal in Santee Cooper, S.C. and were working together before they came to Oklahoma. According to newspapers and Ridge himself, Dynamic Gaming was to give the town of Webbers Falls $300,000, a statement also found in ex-mayor Jewell Horne�s deposition for the federal civil case, and Ridge has also said on his website that he was giving the town $300,000 with the first $100,000 already made. To one party from North Carolina, Horne and Ridge also represented the town of Webbers Falls as the devastated Southern Cherokee reservation, a claim which resulted in the delivery to Webbers Falls of a tractor-trailer load of furniture, medicine and clothing along with cash donations for the poor Southern Cherokee flood and tornado victims.
Jewell Horne and city of Webbers Falls have supported Ridge and been involved and drawn into many of the cons, one being that of Rodger Dale Griggs, the alleged Prince of Ethiopia and a bond scam. Griggs received 19 years 7 months in his federal criminal conviction in South Bend, Indiana in April 2006, one more alleged Southern Cherokee chief brought into these cons by Ridge. Ridge supplied Griggs the tax number for United Deitist, Native American church of the Southern Cherokee� for use in his fraud. In spite of his past claims, Ridge testified in federal civil court he was not a Southern Cherokee or a member of the tribe. And dont forget Michael Buley of Kentucky, a non-Indian and just another self-proclaimed Southern Cherokee chief....
During the federal civil case in February 2006, the judge referred to the Southern Cherokee as a bunch of fakes and wannabee Indians and then the case was heard and ruled on by a jury. This is the same judge who refused to allow us to have a bench trial as requested.
Among the members of the jury were at least four Dawes allottee Indians who, after the trial was over, told our lawyer for this case that they were Indians and the Southern Cherokee were not. ...At no time does the Southern Cherokee Nation solicit money from its members....
