Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA)

Steven Thomas accepts the fact that he’s no longer business manager of Laborers International Union of North America Local 500.  What he doesn’t accept is that the Toledo, Ohio union has a right to shortchange him out of back vacation pay.  At least that’s how he frames the issue.  On January 13, Thomas filed suit in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, alleging the construction union owes him more than $20,000.  This may be a case of bad timing, given that he’s facing trial in Toledo federal court this May on two counts of embezzlement.  

This might not be the end of the Gambino crime family, but it’s certainly a good facsimile.  On February 7 of this year, FBI agents fanned out throughout the New York City area, arresting around 60 people for crimes dating back to the Seventies.  Those offenses included racketeering, murder, extortion, theft, mail fraud, loan sharking and money laundering.  The raids, coordinated with raids that produced arrests of some two dozen organized crime figures in Palermo, Sicily, were the culmination of an investigation called Operation Old Bridge.  After the arrests, dominoes toppled quickly.  By the end of September, fully 60 of the 62 Gambino members and associates named in the 170-page indictment unsealed in Brooklyn federal court had pleaded guilty, with three dozen already sentenced.  Two locals affiliated with the Laborers International Union of North America figure heavily in this.

Mob-union alliances never quite went out of style in Providence, Rhode Island.  Federal prosecutors are determined that one day they will.  On October 28, a grand jury charged two men, Harold Tillinghast, Jr. and Gerald Diodati, with conspiracy to commit labor racketeering.  The defendants, respectively, a former organizer for Laborers International Union of North America Local 271 and a Providence building contractor, allegedly facilitated a project kickback scheme that involved the union and New England’s Patriaraca crime family.  The charges are the result of an FBI probe that began in 2002.

The lure of nightlife and travel can be hard to resist.  And sometimes people pay the tab at someone else’s expense and without permission.  Steven Thomas and Thomas Leonard are learning the downside of this.  Until 2006, the pair had served, respectively, as construction manager and recording secretary for Laborers International Union of North America Local 500 in Toledo, Ohio.  That’s when the union removed the pair from their posts for allegedly using funds to pay for more than $30,000 worth of strip club visits and personal travel.  Now prosecutors have gotten into the act.  On July 23, the two men were charged in federal court with embezzlement.  The action follows a lengthy investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor.