Money Trail Sought as Westerhuis Murder, Suicide Details Emerge

Many details are being found regarding Scott Westerhuis, the company he worked for, the non-profit he was the director of, and grant money intended to be used to prepare Native American teenagers for college, called the Gear Up program.

Dakota free press blogger Cory Heidelberger found several entities listed with the secretary of state’s office and IRS documents, all directly connected with Scott Westerhuis.

Seven corportate entitites that Scott Westerhuis has created over the last decade or so.  Four of those entities are still in good standing and active corporations.  Three of them are non-profits, one is a consulting firm.    His non -profits, two of them, Native American education organizations, they are revenues reported on their IRS documents on the order of about three million dollars.  One of them has  $600,000 listed as Gear Up money, which is the federal grant for Indian education that Westerhuis's employer Mid Central Education Cooperative just lost.  So there are documents indicating connections to these monies to these non-profits that Westerhuis ran, but there's a lot more research to do now to find out just how the money was flowing and how Westerhuis was handling it.

Heidelberger says the non-profit organizations registered by Westerhuis are raising more questions.  He's also followed up with retrieving IRS documents on his quest to find more details.

Authorities continue to investigate the murder suicide of the Westerhuis family last Thursday, September 17, at the family home just south of Platte.