Fraternal Order of Police (FOP)

Police Union Treasurer in Pennsylvania Found Dead on Day Before Sentencing

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 04/20/2009 - 16:48

Whether or not due to natural causes, the death of Katherine Leese was unexpected. Leese, a former Falls Township, Pennsylvania police officer, was discovered dead in her home on the afternoon of Monday, April 6, the day before she was to be sentenced for embezzling funds from the Bucks County Fraternal Order of Police (Lodge 93) where she had been treasurer. She was found in her bedroom by her mother in the Middletown Township home they shared. "It looks to be natural causes," said her attorney, Ronald Elgart. "She was in very poor physical health," adding that the timing of her death was "beyond bizarre." It certainly qualified as at least strange.

NE Pennsylvania President, Treasurer Sentenced, Plead Guilty

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 02/09/2009 - 01:00

Gerald Conaway knows he’s done wrong.  But the former union official will have to do some time just the same.  Conaway, formerly president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 93 in Bucks County, Pa., received a three-to-23-month prison sentence on January 28 for theft of $5,500 in union officer benefit funds to pay off personal debts.  The Southampton, Pa. resident admitted before Bucks County Judge Jeffrey Finley that he’d “tarnished the badge” he was sworn to uphold.  On one level, he’s lucky:  His fellow defendant, former FOP Treasurer Katherine Leese, pleaded no contest in the same courtroom to embezzling far more. 

Pittsburgh-Area Local Secretary Indicted for Thefts

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 09/08/2008 - 00:00

Donna Simpson’s $50,000-plus salary as a union secretary apparently wasn’t enough to make ends meet, so for a year and a half she took to stealing from the union.  The thefts weren’t detected at first, but her good luck streak eventually ended.  Simpson was indicted in late August by a federal grand jury in Pittsburgh for embezzling $87,823 from a bank account of the United Steelworkers of America’s Organization for Active Retirees.  Neither she nor union spokespersons could be reached for comment.   

 

Simpson, 42, a resident of East McKeesport, Pa., had served as field secretary for the organization.  U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Buchanan said in a prepared statement that from June 2006 until early 2008 she wrote herself 82 unauthorized union checks.  Her salary last year was $50,305, according to the union’s financial report to the U.S. Department of Labor.  The indictment follows an investigation by DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.  (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 8/26/08).    

 

Ohio Local President Indicted for Embezzlement, Records Fraud

Indiana Police Local, County Sheriff Trade Charges over Theft

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 12/31/2007 - 01:00

Allegations of corruption within or between law enforcement officers’ unions often have a nasty edge.  Its members, sworn to uphold the law, take insinuations of impropriety as an attack on their integrity.  Union Corruption Update over the past year has reported on separate cases of internal warfare at police or sheriffs’ unions in the Nashville, Sacramento and San Bernardino areas.  Add Lake County, Indiana to the list.  The police union there has been trying to remove the county sheriff in the wake of allegations that one of his employees had embezzled as much as $24,000 from the union.  And the sheriff has fired back, urging the union leader to resign for dereliction of duty.

Tennessee Spook Pleads Guilty to Making False Statements

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 10/22/2007 - 00:00

When two unions decide a town isn’t big enough for both of them, officials of one union aren’t necessarily respectful of the niceties of law in winning members away from the other.  Such has been the case in the Nashville area, where a Teamsters local has been engaging in low-intensity guerrilla warfare with a rival union affiliated with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).  Secrets of that battle continue to emerge.  On Friday, September 21, Joe Everson, a resident of Memphis, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to making false statements in connection with a joint FBI-Department of Labor-Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe surrounding the discovery in July of surveillance equipment at an FOP summer youth camp.

Nashville Police Decommission Officer in Surveillance Plot

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 08/13/2007 - 00:00

As if Teamsters Local 327 doesn’t have enough to worry about these days, the union now is finding itself in a different kind of trouble, one rooted in recent events.  The Nashville Metro Police Department has decommissioned one of its officers after learning on July 26 that the officer had been involved in a plot to bug an event held by the local’s rival, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).  The action is the latest installment in an ongoing Teamsters-FOP feud in the Nashville area, where the Teamsters more than a year ago won collective-bargaining rights.  The officer, Roy Dunaway, had served as the police department’s liaison to Local 327.  Making this black-bag operation even more inexplicable is the fact that the suspects had planted the listening device(s) at the FOP’s summer youth camp in Mt. Juliet, east of Nashville.

County Sheriff Investigating Embezzlement from Alabama Local

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 01/29/2007 - 01:00

The Jefferson County, Alabama sheriff’s department is pretty certain they have their person.  The department, acting on a tip back in October, conducted a probe into the disappearance of nearly $50,000 in funds from Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 64, a group made up primarily of sheriff’s deputies in the county, which encompasses Birmingham.  The suspect, though not yet charged with a crime, is a retired sheriff’s department secretary-treasurer.  Prosecutors reportedly expect to file a charge of first-degree theft against the individual, who was not publicly identified.

Former Leaders of Philadelphia Local Charged with Theft

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 10/23/2006 - 00:00

On September 26, Lawrence Marable and Deborah Powell, respectively, the former president and treasurer of Local 1793 of the American Federation of Government Employees, were each charged in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania with five counts of property theft, one count of making false record entries, and one count of conspiracy to steal $187,000 worth of property.  The local represents employees at the VA Hospital in Philadelphia located at University and Woodland Avenues.  The charges follow a joint investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Inspector General.  (OLMS, 10/9/06). 

 

D.C. Local Ex-President Sentenced for Embezzlement

Ex-Local Bookkeeper in Oregon Pleads Guilty to Embezzlement

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 05/22/2006 - 00:00

On April 14, Deann Schnepple, ex-bookkeeper for LIUNA District Council of Oregon, Southern Idaho and Wyoming, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to an information count charging her with embezzling $44,758 in district funds.  Sentencing has been set for June.  (OLMS, 5/16/06).

 

GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES (AFGE)

Pittsburgh Local Ex-President, Secretary Charged with Theft

Homeland Security Employees Official Charged with Theft

Submitted by Carl Horowitz on Mon, 08/01/2005 - 00:00

Diane Sampson thought she could put one over the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.  It was a bad mistake.  On July 19, Ms. Sampson, a native of Guyana, was suspended without pay after being charged with the theft of more than $23,000 from her union, the Federal Protection Service Labor Committee, an affiliate of the Fraternal Order of Police.  The group represents employees of the Federal Protective Service, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

 

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