The former chairman of the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe, who also used to be the president of the tribe’s gaming authority, pleaded guilty Friday to tax fraud charges in connection with a casino the tribe plans to build in Taunton, authorities said.
Cedric Cromwell, 60, of Attleboro, pleaded guilty to four counts of filing a false tax return, according to a press release from United States Attorney Leah B. Foley and Ted E. Docks, special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Field Division.
Cromwell didn’t report more than $177,000 in income — most of it related to the planned First Light Resort and Casino in Taunton — on his federal tax returns from 2014-2017, authorities wrote.
A judge will sentence Cromwell Nov. 5 for both this case and for extortion convictions that were reinstated by the First Circuit Court of Appeals last year after a trial court had dismissed them, authorities said.
Initially, Cromwell faced both tax and extortion charges, after a federal grand jury in Boston indicted him in March 2021. He was accused of extorting “an architecture-and-design firm that had a contract to serve as the Gaming Authority’s ‘owner’s representative’ for the casino project,” authorities said.
But the trial court separated the tax counts from the extortion counts and Cromwell went before a jury in 2022 on the extortion charges. A jury convicted Cromwell of four extortion-related charges in May 2022; however, the trial court dismissed the convictions, authorities said.
After an appeals court reinstated that conviction last September, Cromwell appealed again, this time to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the nation’s highest court declined to hear the case and he’ll be sentenced for those charges in November, authorities said.
Cromwell faces the potential for up to three years in prison on the false tax return charges, with one year of supervised release and a fine of $100,000, authorities said.
He faces up to 20 years in prison for each of the four extortion charges, with three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000, authorities said.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Christine Wichers and Jared C. Dolan of the Criminal Division prosecuted the case.
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