A lavish life, a padded résumé and missing cash

By all appearances, Joel Pourier was basking in the good life -- living in a $670,000 home with a pool, driving a Cadillac Escalade and a Hummer.

When asked about the source of his wealth, the $114,000-a-year Minneapolis charter school director usually offered two explanations. He was a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and entitled to casino monies. Or he was independently wealthy.

But Pourier is not a member at Shakopee, officials there said. Relatives say that Pourier, the son of a Pine Ridge Reservation phone company manager and rancher, isn't sitting atop a family fortune either.

"We were never wealthy," said William (Bill) Pourier, Joel Pourier's older brother and CEO of the Indian Health Service hospital in Pine Ridge, S.D. "We were poor."

The source of Pourier's apparent wealth became especially relevant in the past two weeks, as he became the focus of a Hennepin County Sheriff's Office investigation into $160,000 missing from the historic Heart of the Earth/Oh Day Aki charter school.

Pourier has not been charged with a crime. His attorney, Tom Sieben, said his client is innocent. A Hennepin County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman said investigators continue poring through school financial records.

The school, founded by the American Indian Movement in the 1970s to provide a nurturing environment for American Indian students, faces closure because of its damaged finances.

Poor financial oversight has been the downfall of a number of charter schools in Minnesota and across the country. But Eugene Piccolo, executive director of the Minnesota Association of Charter Schools, said the Heart of the Earth situation is one of the worst cases of mismanagement he has seen.

People close to the 220-student school say they didn't know just how bad things were getting until the director was suspected of embezzlement.

Financial trouble

Pourier was hired six years ago as finance director, to pull Heart of the Earth out of debt. Principal Darlene Leiding had worked with him at another charter school where he was an unlicensed math teacher. He told her that he had an MBA with an emphasis in finance. The school survived and Pourier was later named executive director.

But trouble came to light in a June 30 audit for the 2006-07 school year. The audit, six months late, noted that the school failed to implement a balanced budget and lost more than $78,000 for failing to provide accurate information to state and federal authorities. In addition, more than $160,000 in expenses were unexplained.

That same audit noted that Pourier had unfettered power to pay school bills. Leiding said she reviewed bank records and found multiple checks that Pourier wrote to himself, without a second signature. Many of those checks are at the heart of the investigation.

According to a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County, a confidential informant told investigators that Pourier wrote checks to pay for goods and services the school never received. An informant also said that Pourier wrote checks to himself and paid his personal credit card with money from school accounts.

The Minnesota Department of Education has stopped making federal and state payments to the school. On Aug. 12, the Minneapolis Public Schools quit sponsoring Heart of the Earth.

Charter schools must have a sponsor to operate.

"What was done by the individual or individuals was horrible," said Piccolo, of the charter school association. "But responsibility also lies with the [school's] board. First and foremost they should have caught this stuff."

But Johnny Smith, a Heart of the Earth teacher and school board vice chairman, said he and the board's chairman, John Plunkett, required Pourier to have two signatures to make purchases with school funds. Pourier somehow circumvented that, Smith said.

"This is outright stealing," he said. "As far as the board was concerned, everything was kosher until June."

Living large

Despite a work history in Indian education and alternative schools, Pourier has lived a wealthy lifestyle for years.

Records show he owns at least three homes: One valued at $667,000 in Shakopee, another at $205,000 in New Prague and the third, in Minneapolis, at $320,000. The New Prague home was bought by Pourier's wife, Christin, in 2002. Pourier purchased the Minneapolis home in December 2005 and the Shakopee home, in the exclusive Eagle Creek Preserve, in December 2006.

Kayce Liebre has been renting the New Prague house for $1,500 a month for more than a year -- until the Pouriers told her last week to be out by the end of the month. She said the Pouriers each drove Escalades.

"I drop off the rent check at the [Shakopee] house," she said. "It's really nice."

Mike Forcia, a friend for the past six years, said Pourier told him he was independently wealthy. It sure seemed that way. Pourier loaned Forcia money -- $1,500 here, $900 there. Each time, when Forcia repaid the loan, Pourier told him: "If there's anything you need, let me know."

Pourier often picked up the tab when the school staff went out for drinks, and he hosted cookouts at his Shakopee home.

Ryan Van Thorre taught at Heart of the Earth for five years, but left last spring along with four other teachers; he said paychecks started bouncing and health insurance bills weren't paid. "When your director shows up in an Escalade or a Hummer, you notice," he said. "Even the kids asked."

Van Thorre said Pourier told staff members he was a member of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux tribe that owns Mystic Lake Casino and showed them membership documents at a staff meeting.

But officials with the Mdewakanton Sioux Community said that neither Pourier nor his wife is an enrolled member. Pourier is a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe from the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest in the country.

Background questions

Bill Pourier remembers his younger brother called him from his Florida condo in 2006 and "told me he was worth $2.7 million. I said, 'Wow. Congratulations to you.' Just a few years ago, I heard he was struggling really bad. I heard he had a part-time job at a Super 8."

Joel Pourier said his wife worked as a stock broker and they had made a killing in the market, Bill Pourier said. But Christin Pourier is not registered as a broker, according to records of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FIRA). Liebre, the Pouriers' tenant, said Christin is a stay-at-home mom.

"My father used to say that my brother likes to tell false things all the time. He told me to be careful of that," Bill Pourier said.

On his résumé, Joel Pourier characterizes himself as having "a successful administrative and financial track record" and a master's degree in business administration from Chadron State College in Chadron, Neb. According to the registrar's office at Chadron, Pourier never attended the school.

He also said he has a bachelor's degree in business administration from Schenectady County Community College in Schenectady, N.Y., and an associate degree in accounting from Haskell University in Lawrence, Kan. Officials at both schools said Pourier did not earn degrees there.

Sieben, Joel Pourier's attorney, declined to comment on his client's background.

As investigators delve into school finances, Forcia struggles to reconcile the man he knows with Pourier's troubles.

"I just hope that these allegations are false and what he's saying is true," Forcia said. "If not, then he's been misleading me and a lot of other people for a long, long time."

Staff writer Terry Collins contributed to this report. James Walsh • 612-673-7428 Patrice Relerford • 612-673-4395