Federal prosecutors accuse a New Mexico woman of fraud in oil and gas royalty case
She is accused of defrauding the U.S. government and two Native American tribes.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A New Mexico businesswoman is accused of defrauding the U.S. government and two Native American tribes of taxes and royalties due to them for oil and gas that her companies extracted from leased federal and tribal lands.
Federal prosecutors announced this week that Teresa McCown recently was indicted by a grand jury on several wire fraud charges and violations of the Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Management Act. She was released from custody earlier this month. A trial date has yet to be scheduled.
A phone number listed for McCown went unanswered Saturday. It was not immediately clear from court records if she had an attorney who could speak on her behalf.
Federal authorities say McCown consistently underreported oil and gas production from the lands in questions over a period of years beginning in 2017.
Records indicate her businesses — M&M Production & Operation Inc. and Shoreline Oil & Gas Company — have been operating in northwestern New Mexico's San Juan Basin since the early 1990s. According to the indictment that was filed in late January and only recently made public, the companies held more than 30 leases on land belonging to the federal government, the Navajo Nation and the Jicarilla Apache Nation.
McCown's indictment came just days after the U.S. Department of Justice announced the outcome of another case in which Hilcorp San Juan L.P. — an oil and gas company with offices in New Mexico and Texas — agreed to pay more than $34 million to resolve allegations that it knowingly underpaid royalties owed on oil and gas produced from federal lands.
In that case, authorities said Hilcorp San Juan made payments to the
Read more on abcnews.go.com
