Nell Cooper Leatherwood, Embezzlement, North Carolina 2023

ASHEVILLE, N.C. – In a shocking turn of events, the former Executive Director of the Sequoyah Fund, Inc. has been sentenced to 27 months in prison for embezzling more than half a million dollars from the fund, announced Jill Westmoreland Rose, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.

Nell Cooper Leatherwood, 57, of Bryson City, N.C., was also ordered to serve three years under court supervision, and to pay a $5,000 assessment and $545,707.50 as restitution. U.S. Attorney Rose commended the FBI for leading the investigation and the USDA-OIG for their assistance in the case.

According to filed court documents and today’s sentencing hearing, Leatherwood misused the corporate SFI credit card to pay for personal expenses from about January 2010 to about November 2013. These credit card bills were later paid using SFI funds without the SFI board’s knowledge of the nature of the expenditures. Leatherwood also previously admitted to embezzling SFI funds by issuing herself checks linked to the corporate SFI bank account.

From about December 2012 to about November 2013, Leatherwood wrote approximately 47 checks to herself, forging board members’ signatures on the checks, which she then cashed and deposited for her personal use. Over the course of approximately four years, court records show that Leatherwood embezzled approximately $65,000 by forging SFI checks.

Leatherwood pleaded guilty in June 2016 to one count of embezzlement from an Indian tribal organization; one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds; one count of access device fraud; and forty-seven counts of making, uttering, and possessing forged securities.

Leatherwood will be ordered to report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons to begin serving her sentence upon designation of a federal facility. All federal sentences are served without the possibility of parole.

In making today’s announcement, U.S. Attorney Rose thanked the Sequoyah Fund for their assistance throughout the investigation. U.S. Attorney Don Gast, of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Asheville, prosecuted the case.

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