First Nations Chief Convicted After Stealing $290K From His Own Band

On February 21, 2020, Napoleon Mercredi — a former Chief of Fond Du Lac First Nation in far northern Saskatchewan who served a two-year term from fall 2009 to fall 2011 — was convicted of fraud, theft over $5,000, and breach of trust by Court of Queen's Bench Justice Gary Meschisnick in Prince Albert after an eight-year investigation established that he had personally misappropriated between $260,000 and $290,000 in band funds during his tenure. Mercredi held unrestricted signing authority over the band's line of credit and collected a $65,000 annual salary plus travel allowances throughout his term; Crown prosecutor Darren Howarth demonstrated that personal expenditures — including a $29,000 truck routed through band accounts — were made without a single piece of documentation establishing a business purpose, a fact the defence attempted to use as a shield but which the court treated as the clearest possible evidence of breach of trust. The $260,000–$290,000 attributed to Mercredi personally was drawn from a broader $775,000 total misappropriation across multiple officials during the same period, with the underlying funds sourced in part from Indigenous Services Canada appropriations intended to support economic development for a Dene community of approximately 1,800 members on the south shore of Lake Athabasca — members who went without those resources for years while investigators slowly untangled an account trail that had been deliberately left undocumented. --- Disclaimer: This video is a dramatization based on real events. Some visual content was created with artificial intelligence assistance. Some details have been fictionalized and all names have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.