The Seneca Nation of Indians is challenging an arbitration court ruling that says the tribe owes the state of New York nearly $25gm.

In January, the Senecas came out on the losing end of a dispute with New York State over the tribe’s refusal to share 25% of its three casinos’ slots revenue with the state, as stipulated under their tribal-state gaming compact. At the time, the three-person arbitration panel – in a split 2-1 decision – estimated the tribe owed the state around $200m.

Last week, the panel delivered its mathematics homework, which said the Senecas were on the hook for exactly $255,877,747.44. The panel further instructed the Senecas to resume the quarterly payments to the state that it had halted in April 2017. That first quarterly payment of 2019 is about to come due.

The funds that the Senecas would have been paying the state have been put into escrow, so the tribe won’t have to break the bank to honor its obligations. But the Senecas have now formally asked the federal Department of the Interior (DOI), which oversees the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), to review an amendment the tribe claims the arbitration panel made to the gaming compact.