Indigeous Global Development Corp.(IGDC), a defunct Native American financing company with purported energy deals that would help enrich tribes in the United States, faces charges of fraud, according to in a filing Wednesday by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

When calls were made to the firm’s San Francisco telephone number, the operator said the number was disconnected.

SEC’s filing alleged that IGDC and its CEO, Deni Leonard, raised more than $2 million from investors through what the federal agency said was “a series of materially false and misleading statements” about the company’s natural gas business. At the time, the SEC said that IGDC was “teetering on the brink of extinction,” and a summary of some of its latest quarterly accounting reports all showed red ink.

A year ago, IGDC issued a (Sept. 21, 2005) news release announcing “an infusion of an investment package of $100 million by an Asian investment energy group,” noting that initially a third of the money would be used to buy “two producing oil and natural gas projects and roughly 240 miles of natural gas pipeline in Kansas.” It listed the probable reserves of the oil/gas properties as 250 Bcf.

The SEC filed its complaint in the U.S. District Court for Northern California accusing IGDC of making “a series of false statements” in press releases and SEC filings about the company’s ability to purchase gas from indigenous people in Canada at a discount and resell the gas in the United States for a hefty profit. The complaint alleged that the company issued the false statements to keep investors thinking that the company was poised to make millions of dollar off its natural gas program.

In July last year, IGDC CEO Deni Leonard was the keynote speaker at an annual conference in Australia’s Northern Territories for various indigenous people there. According to the company’s press release Leonard provided information on IGDC’s various Native American education and economic development programs, of which the energy business was supposedly a part.

SEC charges portray the firm as misrepresenting nearly everything it purported to be doing in the energy sector. Attempts by NGI to get a hold of someone connected with IGDC to get its perspective and current status of the company were unsuccessful.

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