An accountant brought in to “clean up” financial disarray within the Torres-Martinez Tribal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program was later convicted of embezzlement of government funds from a tribal housing program in Arizona.

Loren Goldtooth was hired as interim chief financial officer for the Torres-Martinez welfare program in 2002.

Goldtooth arrived following former executive director Virginia Hill's firing of the program's previous chief financial officer, after Hill said she discovered numerous problems with financial record-keeping and how checks were being cut.

A December 2002 letter from Hill to the Torres-Martinez Tribal Council indicated Goldtooth was considering taking the tribal welfare program's chief financial officer position full-time.

Hill told The Desert Sun that Goldtooth continued on with the Torres-Martinez program for at least some time after she resigned under pressure in April 2003.

Just prior to coming to the Torres-Martinez, Goldtooth had served two years as executive director of TOKA, a housing program for the Tohono O'Odham Indian Nation in Arizona, which received more than $14 million in federal funding while he was director.

In February 2006, Goldtooth was indicted on embezzlement and tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he received nearly $35,000 in overtime from TOKA to which he was not entitled and charged the housing program nearly $18,000 in personal credit card expenditures, including 15 trips to Las Vegas and Reno, Nev., and tickets to rock concerts and a professional baseball game.

Goldtooth also faced multiple counts for not filing federal income tax returns from 1999 through 2002.

An Arizona jury found Goldtooth guilty of all seven counts against him, and in September 2008 he was sentenced to a year in prison and ordered to pay more than $52,000 in restitution to the Tohono O'Odham Nation.

Goldtooth appealed his conviction, but the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the conviction in October.