DETROIT, MI — Tim Edmunds, a former UAW officer with Local 412 in Warren, Mich., pled guilty Friday to defrauding the union of $2.2 million and money laundering.
According to the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan, he may face up to nearly five years in jail.
Edmunds, 54, was charged with the offences around four months ago following the discovery of malfeasance during an internal UAW audit. He is the sixteenth person indicted — and sixteenth to plead guilty — in the government’s continuing corruption investigation, which has resulted in a six-year period of union surveillance.
Edmunds faces 46 to 57 months in jail and will reimburse the UAW $1.9 million in reparations under the terms of a plea bargain. Prosecutors allege that before his crimes were detected, he remitted $300,000 in stolen monies to the union.
Prosecutors say that Edmunds, as financial secretary, “systematically drained” Local 412’s accounts of almost $2 million by using company credit cards for personal expenditures, moving funds to his personal accounts, and depositing Local 412 checks into his personal accounts.
According to criminal documents, he utilised the money to gamble as well as acquire designer apparel, high-end autos, and weaponry.
Prosecutors allege that he used a Local 412 debit card to make over $30,000 in illicit withdrawals at Detroit’s Greektown Casino over a two-year period. He also acquired a 2016 Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT for $74,000, a 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk for $96,000, and a 2021 Dodge Durango for $76,000.
“The UAW’s hardworking men and women deserve leaders committed to serving the membership’s best interests,” US Attorney Dawn N. Ison said in a statement. “Today’s conviction underscores our aggressive pursuit of anyone who would use their positions of trust inside the United Auto Workers to steal and cheat union members.”