Posts tagged fraud
Port strike longshoremen union boss linked to murdered mobster in ‘farce’ racketeering case he beat at trial
October 8, 2024 // George Daggett, the attorney, said the case began after his cousin asked a Catholic priest for financial advice and had $18 million in union funds placed under the supervision of the same money manager who worked with Our Lady of the Lake Church in Sparta, New Jersey. "So at the trial, every time a mobster’s name was mentioned, the government had a big board, and they made a circle, [and] every time a mobster was mentioned, they put his picture up on this big board," he said. "The government’s case ended, and I took Father Cassidy’s picture and I put it in the middle of all those mobsters. So that's the kind of trial it was."
How a Biden federal employee got paid for ‘teleworking’ while actually spending four DAYS in jail on a DUI charge
August 15, 2024 // Vargas was also arrested on three other occasions, including for multiple DUIs, between 2020 and 2022. During that time, she also served as the former president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 3138. Read More EXCLUSIVE Social Security whistleblower reveals 'weeks to months' response time for 'simple requests' due to telework abuse article image In April 2023, Vargas allegedly 'confessed' to an AFGE staff member that she misappropriated $17,000. However, after a review, the federation found that the amount was actually closer to $20,500. In August 2023, she was 'suspended' from all AFGE affiliated offices.
Boeing Seattle factory workers to send ‘strong message’ at strike sanction vote, union says
July 18, 2024 // While the vote is considered procedural, the union is kicking off the 12 p.m. PDT event with fanfare, including an earlier convoy of workers on 800 motorcycles. “It does empower the negotiating committee, it does send a strong message,” union local president Jon Holden said about the vote during a June interview. For example, the vote would free up funds in case members choose to strike later, he added. North American unions have capitalized on tight labor markets to win hefty contracts at the bargaining table, with airline pilots, autoworkers and others scoring big raises.
Former Scranton Police Officer And Police Union President Sentenced To Imprisonment For Federal Program Fraud In Connection With Overtime Patrol Shifts At Scranton Area Housing Complexes
June 7, 2024 // The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced today that Paul Helring, age 48, a former Scranton police officer and the former elected police union president, was sentenced on June 4, 2024, by United States District Court Judge Robert D. Mariani to 6 months’ imprisonment and a 2-year term of supervised release for the offense of Theft Concerning Programs Receiving Federal Funds. According to the United States Attorney’s Office, from approximately March 2021 to May 2022, while serving as the coordinator of Scranton Police Department’s extra duty overtime program, Helring knowingly obtained by fraud over $5,000.00 in compensation that was paid to him for certain extra duty patrol shifts at local, Scranton-area, lower-income housing complexes that Helring claimed to work but did not in fact work. In all, the investigation found a total of 526 hours that Helring claimed to work patrolling the complexes but that he did not actually work. At his sentencing, Helring was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $17,831.40 and to pay a fine of $5000.00. He was also ordered to complete 100 hours of community service as a condition of his supervised release.
Op-Ed: To win the South, unions should embrace right to work
April 30, 2024 // Workers might even be more inclined to back a union if they knew that the union leadership had to be mindful of the members' concerns. And if a union has so few paying members that it collapses, then maybe it should fail. That lack of support indicates its members didn't see much value in it. It remains to be seen if unions like UAW can learn to live with right to work laws in the first place or if they try to fight them. Union leaders by and large hate the laws precisely because they give them less control over the members and potentially leave the unions in a weak financial state.
Jury Selected in New John Dockerty Trial
April 18, 2024 // A jury has been selected in the third trial of former Philadelphia labor leader, John Dockerty. In December, Dockerty and a former union president were found guilty of corruption and embezzlement after stealing over $600,000 from the electrical workers union. “The Inquirer” reports that this trial is based on “conspiracy and extortion” charges.
Farming giant claims UFW lied to farmworkers to unionize under new law
April 9, 2024 // An apparently successful card check campaign to unionize Wonderful Nurseries faces allegations of a scheme involving $600 federal relief funds.
Stalled Labor Pick Julie Su Lets Herself Off the Hook for California’s Missing Billions
April 2, 2024 // California’s auditor notes that the U.S. Department of Labor has issued helpful “guidance” for state finance officials in “Unemployment Insurance Program Letter 05-24.” Flip over to the U.S. Department of Labor’s DOL 05-24 letter and you learn what Julie Su is up to. The DOL memo says a Covid-era agreement between the feds and state unemployment departments “required states to use the CARES Act funds ‘for the purpose for which the money was paid to the state’ and to ‘take such action as reasonably may be necessary to recover for the account of the United States all benefit amounts erroneously paid and restore any lost or misapplied funds paid to the state for benefits or the administration of the Agreement.” But how will the federal DOL know whether states took “such action as reasonably necessary to recover” the billions stolen by fraudsters? Because the states will tell them so, or, as the DOL put it in inimitable Orwellian language: “Applying state finality laws to the CARES Act UC programs means that, in many instances, the state will not need to take retroactive action to resolve monitoring findings.”
Commentary: Biden fosters Big Labor cronyism
March 25, 2024 // It is bad enough that union dues go to political activity that workers may or may not agree with. It is worse that some union bosses are stealing money from the workers that they claim to represent. Every dollar that a union boss steals is one dollar less that a worker can put toward sending their children to school, putting food on the table, or building a nest egg. The Biden administration enables union corruption because union dues overwhelmingly go toward electing Democrats. Biden’s refusal to pull union bosses away from the trough directly harms workers. Unlike Biden, House Republicans are leading the charge to stamp out union fraud and corruption.
House Seeks Information from Unions on Policies to Prevent Corruption
March 20, 2024 // Each of the letters asks for a comprehensive description of the policies and procedures the union has in place to monitor and deter fraud, corruption, and improper accounting, including any third-party audits, the types of training and education provided to prevent fraud or corruption, internal reporting mechanisms, and disciplinary policies. These questions apply both to each union’s headquarters as well as its locals. U.S. House Subpoenas UAW Local over Controversial Resolution Chairwoman Foxx cites specific examples of corruption for each union. For example, in the Teamsters letter, she cites a state senator from Illinois who was indicted for taking more than $245,000 in fraudulent income and other benefits from Teamsters Joint Council 25 while purporting to be a union organizer.