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HELENA — Three executives of Nevada-based consulting firm will pay a Native American tribe in Montana $2.5 million and face possible prison time for their roles in funneling cash from the tribe's online lending company and kicking back some of the money to tribal officials.

The firm, Encore Services LLC, and the executives, Zachary Roberts, Martin Mazzara and Richard Broome, pleaded guilty earlier this week to wire fraud conspiracy. The firm, represented by Roberts, also pleaded guilty to money laundering conspiracy.

The guilty pleas appear to settle years of civil and criminal litigation in the dispute between Montana's Chippewa Cree Tribe and Encore, which was the tribe's partner in its first attempt to start an online lending company in 2010.

That company ultimately failed, but the Chippewa Cree started a successful company called Plain Green that makes short-term, high-interest internet loans.

Encore claimed to have exclusive partnership rights to all of the tribe's lending operations, and entered into a "fee agreement" with a tribal leader and a Plain Green official in which Encore would receive 15 percent of the revenues from the new lending company.