Tribal leader buys house in Summerlin after lucrative land deals on Strip

The elected leader of a North Dakota tribal nation bought an upscale house in Las Vegas, property records indicate, after his government faced criticism back home for spending more than $100 million for land along the Strip.

Mark Fox, chairman of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation, purchased a two-story home in Las Vegas’ Summerlin community for $843,000 in the fall of 2023, Clark County property records indicate.

Meeting minutes from the council he leads raise the prospect that the tribal government helped finance the purchase. It also appears the council publicly voted on key elements of the deal after the chairman had already taken ownership of the house.

Fox’s home, near the intersection of Charleston Boulevard and Desert Foothills Drive, was built in 2005 and spans more than 2,500 square feet.

The house came with new flooring, a bar area and a pool and hot tub, according to the listing. It also features a balcony with views of the mountains and the Strip and a gourmet kitchen with black-granite countertops and marble-tile backsplash.

“NO EXPENSE SPARED ON THIS MUST-SEE PROPERTY!” the listing declared.

As seen in the deed that recorded the sale with the county, the buyer was Mark Fox, and his mailing address is the same as the Three Affiliated Tribes’ administration office in North Dakota.

Fox paid far above what a typical buyer spends for a house in Las Vegas. During the month of his purchase, the median sales price of previously owned single-family homes in Southern Nevada was $450,000, trade group Las Vegas Realtors reported.

The seller, Teresa McCormick, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that she met Fox, describing him as a “really nice guy.” She declined to say how he paid for the house.

The Review-Journal tried numerous times to interview Fox for this story and emailed him several questions. He never directly responded to the newspaper.

In a statement provided Monday by an outside communications firm, Fox said he purchased his home in Las Vegas pursuant to the tribes’ mortgage program that is open to all tribal members, including himself.

“I am paying for the home with my own money, and I am current on my loan obligation,” Fox said. “The bottom line is that I am treated no differently than any other Tribal member and I am in full compliance with what is required of me.”

Big spending on the Strip

The Three Affiliated Tribes — also known as Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, or MHA Nation — bought 23 acres along the south edge of the Las Vegas Strip for $115 million in recent years. The tribal government acquired the spread without concrete plans for the sites or public votes on most of the spending.

In 2019, the year before MHA Nation started buying real estate in Las Vegas, a member of its tribal council outlined billions of dollars in spending needs to Congress that ranged from health care and housing to road construction and law enforcement.

At a protest in North Dakota in 2023, a woman held a sign that declared, “No more off reservation spending!!” and “Build our future here!!” Another sign, propped up against a man in a cowboy hat with stars on his boots, declared: “No Lost Vegas misspending of the people’s money!”

“Our tribal leadership has no business buying land in Las Vegas when we haven’t taken care of our people back at home,” Carol Good Bear, who ran unsuccessfully in 2022 to unseat Fox, previously told the Review-Journal.

Fox has touted the economic opportunities that come with owning land in America’s casino capital — a lucrative yet fiercely competitive tourism market — and has said the tribes’ options include developing a resort or flipping the land to new owners.

He also said tribal leadership makes investments to generate returns, helping them finance new facilities and services.

“What we did in Las Vegas is exactly in line with that,” Fox previously said.

He also went on to buy a house in a gated community in the suburbs — a home that, according to the listing, came with designer choices from top to bottom.

Tribal mortgage

Under MHA Nation’s mortgage program, the tribal government typically buys a home and enters a payment plan with a tribal citizen. When the loan is paid off, the home is transferred to the borrower, Fox previously told the Review-Journal.

The program currently serves around 450 MHA members, and of those, 230 are outside the reservation boundaries, including in other states, according to mortgage-program credit manager Valerie Mayer.

Fox’s purchase in Las Vegas closed in November 2023, property records show. The next month, at a meeting of MHA Nation’s governing body, the Tribal Business Council, a motion stated that the mortgage program had approved a borrower identified only as Mark Fox for the purchase of a home, and that he had “provided a substantial deposit and down payment” to the program.

The home was in Las Vegas, according to the motion, which did not disclose the address, sales price, or the amount of Fox’s deposit or down payment.

But the motion allowed for the purchase of the house in Fox’s name, and it indicated that “upon completion” of the deal, he would transfer ownership to the Three Affiliated Tribes.

The motion passed, with the chairman abstaining, according to meeting minutes posted on the tribal government’s website.

Fox still owns the house in his name, Clark County records show.

Also, at a Tribal Business Council meeting in February 2024, the council took up a motion naming the title company that would handle a home purchase in Las Vegas for a borrower again identified only as Mark Fox.

MHA Nation’s chairman has the authority to sign all documents to acquire homes through its mortgage program. At the February meeting, the motion called for an exception to the program’s policies and procedures in granting two other top MHA officials the authority to execute all closing documents on Fox’s behalf for the Las Vegas purchase.

The motion was unanimously approved, with the chairman voting yes, meeting minutes show.

Las Vegas holdings

MHA Nation, which operates the 4 Bears Casino on the tribes’ oil-rich reservation, entered Las Vegas in 2020 with its $12 million purchase of an 8.7-acre dirt lot through a bankruptcy case.

At the time, Fox said that he had been eyeing activity in Las Vegas for years.

In 2022, the tribal government expanded its holdings here when it bought 13.3 acres of the neighboring former Route 91 Harvest festival site — scene of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history — for nearly $93 million from casino giant MGM Resorts International.

Tribal leaders said they wholeheartedly supported a proposed memorial site for the Oct. 1, 2017 attack, slated for two acres set aside by MGM.

MHA Nation then bought the long-shuttered White Sands Motel site — a narrow, 1.1-acre plot surrounded on three sides by the former Route 91 property — for more than $10 million in spring 2023 through a probate case.

The Clark County Building Department issued a notice of violation in December after the boarded-up White Sands structure was torn down with a demolition permit, records show.

County officials weren’t aware of the situation until the Review-Journal asked about it, as the newspaper could not find a record of a demolition permit application or a demolition permit for the cleared site.

Fox previously told the Review-Journal that a locally licensed contractor was responsible for acquiring approved permits and had been “directed to rectify the situation as part of their contract requirements.”

He did not answer questions about which contractor was hired to demolish the building or when exactly the structure was torn down.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.