Former SEIU Leader to Feds: It's Time to Pursue Top SEIU Officials in the Tyrone Freeman Corruption Scandal

Check this out. 

Tasty has obtained a five-page memo that was recently sent to the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Labor by a former president of one of SEIU’s local unions.

In a memo dated September 27, 2013, Mike Wilzoch implores the feds to hold SEIU’s head honchos accountable for their roles in the massive corruption scandal centered on Tyrone Freeman.

Wilzoch's memo does a compelling job at connecting the dots. 

Here are some excerpts. The full memo is below.

This is to follow up on our phone conversation. Thank you for agreeing to pass on this communication to those responsible for pursuing this case in the DOL. I’m also copying in 2 DOJ attorneys I have communicated with before on this case who are also in a position to act on these issues:

I have two primary concerns:

1)         As I have expressed to US Attorneys involved in the investigation and successful prosecution of Freeman, he clearly relied on many union officials to enable and hide from the membership and public his criminal activities. There is credible testimony on the record that several of the highest SEIU officials are among those who were directly informed of Freeman’s behavior as early as 2001. There is also the fact that it is a practical impossibility that other members of the SEIU Executive and many more in the chain of command from 2001 on did not know of the years of this abuse. Will they be held accountable?

… Based on the evidence I reference below, and my long experience with many of the parties involved, I repeat that it is a practical impossibility that all of the members of the SEIU Executive and many more in the chain of command from 2001 on did not know of the years of this abuse. Some actively supported and enabled it to continue. Others failed in their duty to the workers not to knowingly allow a member to be harmed. If anyone had the courage of their convictions—and took their oaths and obligations under the law to be more important than their careers and rising paychecks—this could have been stopped in its tracks in long ago.

Who’s Wilzoch and why did he write the memo? Another excerpt:

I am a 23 year veteran of SEIU. I have served as an organizer, representative, director, and Union President. I knew personally many of the officials involved in this disaster besides Tyrone Freeman, including  Andy Stern, Eliseo Medina, Sheila Velasco, Tom Woodruff, Dave Regan, and a number of as-of-yet unnamed (to my knowledge) staffers and leaders of the SEIU International.

We have enough problems dealing with widespread illegal and unethical conduct from employers and the corporate elite. They don’t need any help right now from labor “leaders” who may have done great things once, but lost the plot and forgot just who it is who pays the bills, including their escalating compensation packages. When the abuse of poor homecare workers is handled as a PR problem, then those who knew about and/or enabled it feed a culture of arrogance, entitlement and corruption.

If they are not held accountable, they and everyone else learns that being well connected is more important than taking seriously the responsibility to advocate honestly and relentlessly for working people and our families. They not only continue to profit, sometimes extravagantly, from the honest work of the rank and file, but are also recycled through the labor movement.

For instance, Louis Jamerson, part of Freeman’s Beverly Hills crew listed above, is now a Deputy Trustee at the Local I helped build for 15 years—SEIU Local 105 in Denver. My salary as President was $40K/yr—a few bucks a week more than the staff I supervised. While all things change, I would like to hope that the poisonous culture of staff entitlement and disrespect for the workers at Freeman’s little shop of horrors—and elsewhere—is not spread more than it already has. He is just one notable symptom of a larger tragedy. This is a cancer which I have seen first-hand cause painful damage to the cause of justice for workers in this country—and the prospects for a principled and thriving labor movement—which is needed now more than ever. Please do everything in your power to pursue justice for these workers, no matter how high up the ladder the evidence leads.

Steve Trossman

What else is in Wilzoch’s memo?

Info about SEIU officials' involvement in Freeman’s crime spree.

For example, Wilzoch discusses Steve Trossman’s role in reportedly engineering a 2001 cover-up of Freeman’s corruption. In fact, Wilzoch points to “possible perjury” by Trossman.

Wilzoch also discusses testimony by Jim Philliou in which he describes -- under oath -- how he alerted top SEIU officials about Freeman’s corruption in 2001. 

Dave Kieffer

Which officials did Philliou alert?   

Dave Kieffer and Eliseo Medina’s Chief of Staff, Sheila Velasco, among others. 

According to Philliou, Kieffer later reported that SEIU had conducted “some type of audit” of Freeman’s spending, but didn’t find anything illegal.

Was Kieffer lying?

It sure looks like it. Wilzoch asks: If SEIU actually conducted an “audit,” why didn’t SEIU interview Philliou -- who was the one who first reported Freeman’s corruption? 

Interestingly, many of the SEIU officials who are involved in the Freeman corruption scandal are now tightly connected to Dave Regan. 

SEIU-UHW's Dave Regan

Trossman became Regan’s “Director of Communications” after receiving a quarter-million-dollar payout from SEIU, which is rumored to be ‘hush money.’ Kieffer is SEIU-UHW’s “Director of Governmental Relations.” 

And Philliou has been working as a consultant for Regan and reportedly is now working inside Kaiser Permanente’s “Labor-Management Partnership.”

There’s lots more inside Wilzoch’s memo, which is pasted below.

 

   Memo from former SEIU leader to U.S. Dep't of Justice and Dep't of Labor regarding top SEIU officials' role...

What's behind Eliseo Medina's Swift Departure from SEIU?

SEIU's Eliseo Medina

Eliseo Medina’s rapid exit from SEIU, announced several days ago, is prompting lots of head-scratching.

So, Tasty has penned a lengthier post that's worth a read, IMHO. It offers evidence that Medina's departure is likely tied to recent legal developments in the SEIU/Tyrone Freeman corruption scandal.

Why are people scratching their heads over Medina's exit from the Purple Palace?

First of all, consider the speed of Medina’s departure. Usually, when the head honchos resign, they announce their plans months in advance -- not three weeks beforehand. Plus, it was only 14 months ago that Medina began his four-year term as SEIU’s Secretary-Treasurer. So why is he ditching a fat paycheck that's guaranteed until 2016?

Another clue: SEIU is deliberately downplaying Medina’s rapid exit, which is unusual. SEIU tries to build a celebrity-like ‘cult of personality’ around its top officials by having SEIU's website report their every move… as if they were Miley Cyrus twerking at the MTV awards. 

Ordinarily, if one of SEIU’s top dogs resigns, the Purple Palace puts on a massive show with gushy videos, teary-eyed tributes, and exploding purple confetti machines. In this case, however, SEIU has deliberately buried the news. Medina's retirement didn't even make SEIU's homepage and is noted in just a single press release that’s buried far from easy viewing.

Next, consider Medina's totally implausible explanation for why he’s jumping the Purple Ship. According to Medina, he’s leaving SEIU so he can “now focus solely on fighting for commonsense immigration reform.” But that’s ALL he’s been doing at SEIU for the past few years!

So what’s really going on?

Well, Tasty did some digging… and believes that Medina is likely being forced from office due to recent developments in the SEIU corruption scandal involving Tyrone Freeman. (Freeman, of course, was famously appointed to his position by SEIU President Emeritus Andy Stern.)

Here’s why.

First, Medina is directly implicated in the SEIU corruption scandal. Tasty earlier published portions of sworn testimony by SEIU staffer Jim Philliou in which Philliou testified that he told Medina's office about Freeman’s corruption a FULL SEVEN YEARS before the Los Angeles Times busted Freeman in 2008.

During those seven long years, Medina knew that Freeman was stealing from SEIU's members. But Medina did absolutely nothing  even as Freeman drained more than $12.5 million from SEIU’s members. 

That's not the response you'd expect your union's Secretary-Treasurer, right?

Secondly, new court records indicate that Freeman and his attorneys are frantically scrambling to avoid a multi-year jail term. So Freeman has begun throwing his purple accomplices under the bus in an effort to lighten his sentence. More on this below.

Thirdly, consider the timing. Freeman’s sentencing has been scheduled for September 30, just one day before Eliseo Medina scampers out of the Purple Palace’s back door. Just days ago, a federal judge postponed Freeman’s sentencing until October 7 at 2:00pm, which will allow Medina more time to get out of Dodge.

So... who is Freeman throwing under the bus? They include multiple SEIU officials and even a former California State Senator.

Here's what's happening.

U.S. prosecutors and Freeman's attorneys are locked in a battle over Freeman's upcoming sentencing. In the run-up to the sentencing, the U.S. Probation Office has prepared a "pre-sentencing" report that makes recommendations to the federal judge about the length of Freeman's jail term as well as Freeman’s financial penalties and the conditions of his eventual probation once he exits the Big House.

Both sides -- prosecutors and defense -- are now submitting dueling legal briefs to the judge about the pre-sentencing report. This's where Freeman has begun throwing his purple buddies under the bus.

Here’s one example.

A photo of the Grand Havana Room from its website

Remember the Grand Havana Room? That's the members-only cigar club and exclusive restaurant in Beverly Hills that figured prominently in the Los Angeles Times's initial coverage of SEIU’s crime spree.


The Times calls it “Hollywood's most exclusive new hideaway, a hybrid of the Ivy League secret society and the Prohibition-era speak-easy.” Its members include Robert De Niro, Mel Gibson, Jack Nicholson and Arnold Schwarzenegger… and Tyrone Freeman, until he was busted.

At the cigar club, Freeman spent piles of SEIU members’ dues money on expensive cigars, $175 glasses of cognac, and $1,000 meals for three people. According to court records, Freeman used SEIU’s credit card to pay a $9,000 initiation fee to get his own personal humidor at the club so he could store all the cigars that he bought with workers’ money.

Another photo from website

SEIU also paid the ongoing membership and rental costs for Freeman’s humidor: $800 a month. That’s more than many people pay for an apartment… especially the low-wage homecare workers whom Freeman was supposed to represent. These SEIU members earn only $9 an hour.  

Well, it turns out that the U.S. Probation Office has cited Freeman's orgies of corruption at the cigar club in crafting its recommended prison term. 

In response, Freeman is basically telling the judge, 'Hey, it wasn't so bad. Sometimes I even met with SEIU officials and did SEIU business at the cigar club.'

Here's what Freeman's attorneys wrote in a recent brief to the judge:

the investigative records contain ample evidence that these expenses were not personal, but rather involved the costs associated with business and political meetings. For example, records show that Mr. Freeman met with Kevin Murray, a former State Senator and advisor to the Local Union, at the Grand Havana Room. See Exhibit A. The records also reflect that Mr. Freeman met with union vendors, such as Carl Dickerson, and union staff members at the Grand Havana Room. See Exhibits B & C. Because expenses like these are appropriate and business-related, they cannot be treated as losses under the Guidelines.

Freeman's attorneys then attach records that expose his buddies for joining Freeman's gluttonous episodes at the cigar club.

For example, here's one email that outs a bunch of SEIU's top staffers. With a subject line of “Time with President Freeman,” the email invites the staffers at SEIU Local 6434 to join “President Freeman” from 4-7pm at the Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills. The email indicates Freeman held these worker-funded happy hours at the Cigar Club every Friday.

Plus, the emails show how Freeman used the union-funded happy hour to extract $50 contributions to SEIU’s political fund, called “COPE.” Sounds highly illegal.

Multiple SEIU officials are implicated in this scandal, including Matthew Maldonado, Freeman's top aide; Will Hirst, a close aide to Freeman; Tom Csekey, the current Membership Director of SEIU Local 6434; Wendy Duchen, the current Director of Regions 1 and 4 for Local 6434; Benigno Delgado; Yvonne Olivares; Louis Jamerson; and others.

   Tyrone Freeman's email to SEIU staff to join him at Grand Havana Room and Cigar Club, August 2008

And here's a second record that outs former State Senator Kevin Murray, whom "President Freeman" hired as a consultant. 

   Tyrone Freeman's meeting with former California State Senator at Grand Havana Room in Beverly Hills in July...

Hmmm... did you happen to notice the time of Freeman's supposed "business meeting" with Murray? 1:30am to 3:00am! Sounds like they were doing some serious business at the cigar club.

Of course, Freeman's lame effort to exonerate himself is ridiculous. The fact that other people shared in the fruits of his corruption is no excuse.

In the days ahead, Tasty plans to post more info about what Freeman did inside the club... including the names of other SEIU officials who joined Freeman in his orgiastic escapades at the Beverly Hills club.

This new evidence proves that substantial numbers of SEIU's officials joined in Freeman's corruption at the cigar club.

To an outside observer, what's stunning is the total lack of class consciousness among these many SEIU officials. How can you collect dues from hardworking $9-an-hour homecare workers and then use workers' money to buy $175 glasses of cognac in one of Los Angeles's most exclusive private clubs filled with multi-millionaire corporate executives? WTF!! Even a fourth grader would have better ethical judgment than the fatcat plutocrats who run SEIU.

What's clear is this: All of these SEIU officials should go to jail. And SEIU's pervasive corruption must be addressed as workers rebuild the U.S. labor movement.