Embezzlement & Excess

Unions of education employees are no different from those representing miners, truck drivers, or service workers -- especially when it comes to the threat of embezzlement by union leaders. Local teachers unions are generally exempt from the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, under which labor unions must make their finances public, and the lack of government oversight, internal checks and transparency to members makes it all too easy to raid the union treasury for personal profit.

Unscrupulous leaders at the top of the union hierarchy have a relatively free hand when it comes to spending members’ dues. Between 1995 and 2002, for example, the Washington Teachers Union president, its treasurer, and a handful of others conspired to bilk union members of $5 million, amounting to about $1,000 taken from each member. A federal judge described the WTU’s oversight by its parent, the American Federation of Teachers, this way: “It seems everyone in a responsible position fell asleep at the switch.” Teachers union expert Mike Antonucci wrote of the scandal that a lack of oversight and accountability “too often is standard operating procedure, making cases like that of WTU not only predictable, but likely.”

Lack of oversight and accountability also creates embezzlement stories like the case of United Teachers of Dade (Miami’s teachers union), where union president Pat Tornillo was found to have stolen over $2.5 million of members’ dues money. The FBI raided the union’s offices in 2003, but the problem might have come to light much earlier if UTD’s state or national parent unions had disclosed the organization’s financial distress on their own.

Union treasurers, too, seem to have little difficulty abusing their membership. Early in 2006, for example, Jeffrey Olson was locked up for stealing $140,000 during his tenure as treasurer of a Maine teachers union. Later that year, Colorado teachers union treasurer Kristen Leigh Prevedel pled guilty to embezzling $93,000 worth of members’ dues money. The Colorado Springs Gazette reported that upon Prevedel’s arrest, union leaders attempted an actual cover-up, writing members asking them “to keep silent” about the theft of their money in order to avoid bad press.

The litany of abuses goes on. As finance director of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, Richard Anzivino was able to steal over $800,000 to feed a gambling habit, a crime which prompted one local president to sarcastically tell the Boston Herald in 2003: “I only had one question from my members: was it fast women or slow horses?”

Three years later, Susan Lynn Gregg, secretary of a Michigan teachers union, pled guilty to making false statements on a loan application for her attempt to illegally secure a $29,000 loan against the union treasury with forged signatures and false documents. Gregg also admitted to drafting $178,000 of bad checks on the account of the Copper County teachers union, writing $40,000 in additional bad checks on a Michigan Education Association account, and making other fraudulent loan and credit card applications. And on May 7, 2007, Maine Education Association employee Catherine Crosier was sentenced to federal prison and made to pay $45,500 in restitution for her own theft of union members’ money.

As these examples -- all from just 2002 or later -- illustrate, embezzlement is hardly unknown in teachers unions that promote secrecy and fight disclosure at every turn.

© 2008 Center for Union Facts