The central uncertainty surrounding Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town’s Kalshi-backed app is who had authority to approve the partnership. The town, which has fewer than 400 members, has two claimants to the chief’s office: Wilson Yargee and Samuel Marshall Jr. Each says the other lacks authority to speak for the tribe, including on a deal that led to the PokkeTrades app.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs lists both Yargee and Marshall as chief, reflecting the leadership dispute rather than choosing between them, according to Oklahoma Voice. Michael Stopp, Yargee’s vice president of economic development and a broker of the Kalshi deal, said the BIA acknowledged the standoff directly. Yargee’s administration gave the agency a letter in April 2025 claiming he had been reelected, though public election results were not available to confirm it, the report said.
Marshall tells a different story. He says he was appointed chief by the tribe's governing committee in 2021 and then won election outright in 2025, and he insists Yargee was pushed out of office just months after Yargee's own 2021 election. Marshall's administration maintains it never saw the Kalshi contract and only learned about the agreement after it became public, and it argues Yargee lacked the authority to sign anything on the tribe's behalf.
Kalshi Says the Deal Is Signed and Standing
Kalshi isn't backing away. The company says it stands by its agreement with Yargee's administration, and Kalshi spokesperson Jacki McGavick said the agreement was signed and approved by the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town council, per Oklahoma Voice's reporting. Kalshi and the Yargee administration both declined to provide Oklahoma Voice a copy of the agreement itself.
The arrangement lets the tribe build PokkeTrades, an app that connects users to Kalshi's prediction markets covering sports, political races and weather. Stopp describes prediction markets as a financial service rather than gaming, and Kalshi has separately maintained that its contracts are federally regulated financial instruments rather than sports bets, according to Legal Sports Report. Yargee has called the deal lucrative for the tribe and said any revenue must flow through the tribe's economic development authority, though the Kalshi contract has not yet generated revenue for the town, and tribal leadership has yet to decide how any future proceeds would be used.
Marshall's administration says it plans to file suit to stop the Kalshi agreement altogether, adding to a leadership dispute that has already prompted at least three lawsuits. Oklahoma attorney Robert Gifford, who specializes in Native American law and previously served as a tribal court judge, told Oklahoma Voice that litigation over tribal leadership must start in tribal courts and that the BIA generally prefers these disputes get resolved internally rather than through federal intervention.
A Tangled Legal History
A tribal court filing reproduced by Turtle Talk once declared that “Sam Marshall is the only legitimate and legal Chief of the Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town,” asserting Yargee had been removed through membership votes. The Muscogee (Creek) Nation District Court dismissed a related faction case in 2022 for lack of jurisdiction, after the Marshall administration had waived sovereign immunity to let the court hear the case — the Yargee administration did not do the same.
The court rulings have not settled who leads the town. Judge Ronald White of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma dismissed the Marshall group’s 2023 lawsuit against Yargee and his administration for lack of jurisdiction, according to Front Office Sports. More recently, an Okmulgee County judge ruled in December 2025 that the Yargee administration was not the rightful custodian of a disputed tribal bank account, while Judge Pandee Ramirez wrote in another proceeding that the court was not deciding who the legitimate chief was — saying that determination belonged to the town’s own solicitor. Oklahoma attorney Robert Gifford, who specializes in Native American law and previously served as a tribal court judge, said leadership disputes like this are more common in small tribal towns, where shifts in power can trigger total turnover of tribal employees. He said an agreement like the Kalshi deal would typically need approval from the tribe’s legislative body.
Bigger Stakes for Oklahoma Gaming
The dispute has drawn in Oklahoma's broader gaming industry, since PokkeTrades is one of a handful of Kalshi-backed tribal apps nationwide. Alabama-Quassarte has no gaming operations of its own and is not among the 35 Oklahoma tribes holding gaming compacts with the state, as the Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association has pointed out in reporting from KGOU. The association, which represents 25 Oklahoma tribes running gambling enterprises, has sided with Marshall's position against the prediction markets, previously arguing that such apps infringe on tribes' exclusive gaming rights. Tribal gambling in Oklahoma generates more than $7 billion annually, with a share of that revenue paid to the state in exchange for exclusive casino-style gambling rights under approved compacts.
What the dispute means for sovereignty and gaming
The BIA’s listing of both claimants records an unresolved leadership dispute; it does not decide who has authority to act for the town. The U.S. Department of the Interior’s Indian Affairs describes tribal self-government as flowing from the inherent sovereignty of tribes and nations, a principle relevant to the limits on federal involvement described in this case. The compact-based gaming system at issue in Oklahoma is distinct from the Kalshi partnership: state-tribal compacts cover Class III gaming, while the article reports that compact tribes receive exclusive casino-style gaming rights in exchange for revenue paid to the state. According to the Oklahoma Office of Management and Enterprise Services’ FY2025 report, 33 tribes operated 138 facilities offering Class III gaming related to the compacts at the end of fiscal year 2025, and the state collected more than $221 million in tribal gaming exclusivity fees, a 5% increase over the previous year.
The clash isn't confined to Oklahoma. A coalition of 145 tribes has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to weigh how sports prediction markets affect tribal economic interests and sovereignty, and tribes in New Mexico, California and Wisconsin have already sued Kalshi and other prediction-market platforms, Front Office Sports reports. Prediction markets are regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, but states and the gambling industry continue to dispute whether that federal authority should override state and tribal gaming law.
The Alabama-Quassarte Tribal Town traces its roots to the Muscogee Nation Confederacy, and its enrolled members hold dual citizenship with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Stopp, who worked on the Kalshi agreement alongside Yargee, is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. The Department of the Interior has said it honors tribal sovereignty and self-determination, principles that limit its legal authority to intervene directly in tribal leadership disputes. The town’s leadership and the status of its Kalshi deal therefore remain unresolved.
