BNA's Daily Labor Report: "Former SEIU Official Freeman Gets 33 Months in Jail for...
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Service Employees Former SEIU Official Freeman Gets 33 Months in Jail for Embezzlement Tyrone Freeman, a former official of the Service Employee s International Uni on, was sentenced Oct. 7 to 33 months in jail for embezzling tens ofthousands of dollars from SEIU United Long Term Care Workers Local 6434 (Unit ed States v. Freeman, C.D. Cal., No. CR-12-000734, sentencing 10/7/13). Judge Audrey B. Collins of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ordered Freeman to pay $124,000 in restitution, of which $30,000 will go to the ULTCW. In additio n, the judge ban ned Fre ema n from serving as an officer or in any other management position in any labor union for 13 years after release from prison. Freeman has been ordered to surrender himself to the court Dec. 9. Freeman, the former president of the ULTCW and a for mer member of the SEIU int ernati onal exe cut ive board, was found guilty earlier this year of seven counts of embezzlement and/or theft of labor union assets, four counts of mail fraud, one count of making a false state- men t to a federally ins ure d financial institutio n, and two counts of subscribing to a false tax return (19 DLRA-8, 1/29/13). He was later acquitted on three of the charges against him, including two counts in which he was found guilty of underreporting his income on his federal tax returns for 2006 and 2007. He was acquitted on the third count in which he had been found guilty of embezzling money from his local for his personal wedding expenses be- cause the gov ernment at tria l ide nti fied the wro ng union in this charge (114 DLR A-8, 6/13/13). Three Agencies, FBI, IRS Investigated. Freeman was in- dicted by a fe de ral gr an d jury in July 2012 on 15 charges brought after an investigation by three separate agencies of the Labor Department, as well as by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Rev- enue Service (148 DLR A-11, 8/1/12). Evidence prese nted during Free man’s trial showed that he pilfered money from Local 6434 by diverting to himself reimbursement payments from a public sector union—California Uni ted Homecare Wor kers—that were meant for his local. According to the indictment, Freeman collected $2,500 a month from Local 6434 and CUHW, which was established in 2005 by SEIU and the American Federa- tion of State, County, and Municipal Employees to rep- resent public sector employees in the home care indus- try in California. Freeman, who served as president ofboth organizations, concealed from the Local 6434 ex- ecutive board and the CUHW executive board that he was receiving the payments of $2,500 per month in ad- dition to his regular salary from Local 6434. He also was found gui lty of lyi ng to Cou ntr ywi de Bank FSB when applying for a home loan of nearly $700,000. He falsely told the bank that Local 6434 paid for his personal American Express credit card debt and the monthly lease payments for his Land Rover, when it did not. Collins ordered Fre eman to pay $26,916.6 2 to the ULTCW. According to a Justice Department attorney in California, the section of the United States Code that deals with restitution, 18 U.S.C. § 3663A does not pro- vide for mandatory restitution to unions for money em- bezzled from them. Mandatory restitution to the union in this case is limited to the mail fraud counts, the DOJ attorney said. Collins also ordered Freeman to pay $93,539.66 to Bank of America (formerly FSB bank). Following his jail term, Freeman will serve five years of supervised release. One condition of the supervised release is that he pay ‘‘discretionary restitution’’ to the ULTCW in the amount of $26,916.62. Local Lawsuit Seeking $1.1 Million Has Been on Hold. The sentencing comes nearly five years after SEIU per- man ent ly ban ned Fre ema n, who headed the uni on’ s largest local in California, from holding union office or membership in light of evidence that he had misused union funds (230 DLR A-5, 12/1/08). After a report by an outside hearing officer found Freeman had engaged in a ‘‘pattern of financ ial malpractice and self-dealing,’’ the SEIU ordered him to make restitution of more than $1.1 million to return all misappropriated local funds. A lawsuit filed by the ULTCW in 2009 seeking to compel Freeman to pay the fine (64 DLR A-1, 4/7/09) has been on hold in the Los Angeles County Superior Court at the request of the federal government while it pursued its case. Scott Mann, a ULTCW spokesman, told Bloomberg BNA Oct. 7 that the case was stayed pending the final sentencing of Freeman. Now that this has occurred , he said, the local will be looking at what its options are. NUMBER 196 OCTOBER 8, 2013 COPYRIGHT 2013 BY THE BUREAU OF NA TIONAL AFF AIRS, INC. ISSN 0418- 2693 Daily Labor Report ®
BNA's Daily Labor Report: "Former SEIU Official Freeman Gets 33 Months in Jail for Embezzlement," October 8, 2013
