SEIU Official Makes Bail after Surrendering to Authorities on Corruption Charges

Check out this two-minute TV news clip with the latest details on the corruption scandal involving SEIU's Dana Cope. 

Cope is the latest member of SEIU’s International Executive Board to face criminal corruption charges.

In recent weeks, Cope surrendered to authorities and posted bail after being charged with two felony counts that could land him in jail for 15 years, according to WNCN TV in Raleigh, N.C.

Cope was nabbed by union members who blew the whistle after uncovering records that he spent $570,000 of workers' dues dollars on personal flying lessons, clothing, jewelry, massages, plastic surgery, landscaping for his home, a trip for his family to China, etc.

COPE is a member of SEIU's International Executive Board and also is the highest official at the State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC), an SEIU local that represents 55,000

Mug shot of SEIU's Cope

state employees.

On the news clip, Michael Weisel, an attorney who represents the whistleblowers, says the following about SEIU: 

"There was a complete failure within the organization itself. They didn't follow their own rules. They didn't follow the written bylaws. They didn't follow the written procedures..."

After union members blew the whistle on Cope's corruption, SEIU officials "vilified" them... until journalists and criminal investigators proved they were completely correct.

Cope is the latest SEIU official to face charges, an indictment, an/or jail time for corruption. Others include Tyrone Freeman, Alejandro Stephens, Annelle Grajeda, Janett Humpries, Byron Hobbs, Rickman Jackson and Paul Varacalli.

Click the following hyperlinked text to see the WNCN news story: “Dana Cope Makes Bond after Surrendering to Authorities.” 

SEIU Executive Board Member Is Indicted; Faces up to 15 Years in Prison for Embezzlement

SEIU's Dana Cope: "Let's fly away."

On August 3, Dana Cope -- a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board and the Executive Director of SEIU's 55,000-member State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) -- was indicted on felony charges for embezzling $570,000 from union members, according to news outlets.

A Wake County grand jury charged Cope with obtaining property by false pretenses, which carries a sentence of up to 15 years.

According to the News and Observer:

Among the improper spending with SEANC funds listed in the indictment: landscaping, clothing and jewelry, home renovations and appliances, vacations, hotel rooms, massages and plastic surgery. 

Cope also used $31,345 of union members' money to pay for private flying lessons.

SEIU officials, who resisted workers' early calls for an investigation of Cope, issued a powder-puff comment reminiscent of SEIU’s statements following the criminal indictment of another favorite son, Tyrone Freeman.

Mitch Leonard, SEANC’s new Executive Director, called Cope's indictment "an unfortunate turn of events for Mr. Cope," according to the News and Observer.

 

Cope (left) and his attorney (right) at bail hearing

On August 4, Cope posted a $200,000 bond and was released from the Wake County Detention Center. The bond appeared to be secured by a condominium owned by his wife.

Below is the indictment issued by the grand jury.

Here's a brief video statement from Betty Jones, a former SEANC treasurer, about how she first came to notice the unusual expenditures by Cope.

When she and a second SEANC board member, Art Anthony, raised questions about the expenditures, they were voted out of office. Jones then brought information and documents to the local newspaper. Jones and Anthony "were later vilified by the SEANC executive board," according to the News and Observer.

Here’s Jones's statement to the News and Observer:

  GrandJury-DanaCopeIndictment-August2015.pdf

Breaking: Another member of SEIU’s IEB goes down in corruption scandal

Yesterday, Dana Cope -- a member of SEIU’s International Executive Board (IEB) and the Executive Director of SEIU’s State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC) -- stepped down after a North Carolina district attorney requested a criminal investigation into his alleged financial corruption, according to the Raleigh News and Observer.

According to the newspaper:

Cope faces an inquiry from the State Bureau of Investigation for his handling of SEANC finances. The national union with which SEANC is affiliated, the Service Employees International Union, said it is taking the allegations of financial misconduct seriously.

Cope resigned just two days after the News and Observer published an article about his alleged financial corruption.  SEANC, which is known as “SEIU Local 2008,” represents approximately 55,000 current and retired North Carolina State employees.  

Cope is an example of SEIU’s so-called “21st century unionism.” Just like Andy Stern and Dave Regan, Cope is way more "business" than "labor." For example, Cope was a Vice-President of the Texas Future Business Leaders and has carefully transformed SEANC into an insurance company that only masquerades as a union.

In fact, Cope’s corruption scandal was uncovered by a union member who criticized one of Cope’s latest schemes, whereby union members purchase consumer electronics by paycheck deduction at elevated prices.

In an earlier post, Tasty revealed an internal SEIU memo that reports that SEANC’s "primary function" is "selling insurance." The memo notes that SEANC’s staff consists of 14 insurance salespeople… and only 3 union representatives for its 55,000 members.

As far as the breaking news about Cope's corruption scandal... 

Cope is one of SEIU's 21st Century labor leaders

According to an investigation published earlier this week by the News and Observer, Cope improperly funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars from the union's bank account into his own pocket by using a creative maneuver. He hired construction and landscaping companies to renovate his home, and then instructed union staffers to hire the exact same companies and pay them more than $350,000 for apparently no-show projects.

There were also phony invoices. “One check for nearly $19,000 was justified by a phony invoice and was made out to a defunct computer company,” according to the News and Observer, which also reports the following:

Cope and SEANC’s general counsel admit the memo is phony but will not explain beyond saying it’s a personnel matter.

Oh, and there's also the personal flying lessons. It turns out that Cope really likes flying planes. So… Cope had SEIU members pay $21,000 for his flight school, according to the News and Observer.

So why were SEIU members paying for Cope’s flying lessons? Cope told the News and Observer ‘it allows him to fly with a flight instructor and to travel cheaply and efficiently on SEANC business.’ That's some serious bullsh*t, right?

And it sounds like more skeletons will soon come tumbling out of Cope's overcrowded closet.

Cope charged SEIU members for flying lessons

According to the News and Observer, SEIU allowed Cope "to put thousands of dollars of personal spending each year on SEANC credit cards. Cope has given contradictory accounts about how much of the money he has repaid…”  

One of the expenses that Cope charged to the union's credit card is "eyebrow waxing," according to the News and Observer.

 

Meanwhile, Cope has a history of problems with credit cards. Like buying too much sh*t with them. The newspaper reports that, in 2011, Cope filed for personal bankruptcy to wipe out $109,000 in credit-card debt.

As the scandal unfolded in the press this week, Cope vigorously defended his home repairs, flying lessons, credit card bills, etc. as harmless and above-board. However, once the district attorney asked the State Bureau of Investigation to launch a criminal inquiry into his spending, Cope decided to throw in the towel.

Yesterday, he held a 90-second press conference and all but admitted his guilt, saying:

“In recent days, I’ve come to realize that in carrying out the duties of my job, I have blurred the line between my personal life and my professional life.”

Cope has close ties to SEIU’s top officials.

Not only has he served on SEIU’s IEB for seven years with the likes of “Diamond" Dave Regan and David “See you at the races” Holway, but he reportedly worked with Andy Stern, Anna Burger, Tom Woodruff and Mary Kay Henry to negotiate SEANC’s 2008 merger with SEIU.

At SEIU’s International Convention in 2008, Andy Stern used a ridiculous gimmick to announce that the merger with 55,000-member SEANC had helped boost SEIU’s membership to more than 2 million members.

Which SEIU has kindly memorialized in a YouTube video.

SEIU-UHW Uses Faux Journalist, Denver Henderson, to Infiltrate Kaiser Workers

Here’s a new one. Dave Regan has now deployed a fake journalist to try to talk to Kaiser workers who are not too enthusiastic about talking to SEIU's organizers.

A worker at Kaiser Permanente's Roseville Medical Center sent the following note (Note: “UC Davis” refers to the University of California at Davis):

This is a picture of the idiot who showed up posing as UC Davis journalism student last Thursday when Dave Regan was at the facility.

He was talking to members and staff saying was doing a story on the NLRB election.

2 days later he showed up as an SEIU Organizer.

So who is this guy? 

His name is Denver Henderson. He recently parachuted into California from Missoula, Montana where he works as an SEIU organizer. Here’s a picture of Henderson on the job in Montana.

Apparently, Denver’s newest job duties include lying to SEIU’s members about his identity. Which may come naturally to Denver. He's a wanna-be politician who recently ran a rather unsuccessful campaign for a seat on Missoula’s city council.

So why did Denver lose? 

Maybe it has something to do with his big ego. It turns out that Denver has his own blog and website: DenverHenderson.com -- kinda like SEIU’s Dana Cope.

And, of course, Denver might be a bit more successful if he actually told the truth!

SEIU Backs Chamber of Commerce in Slashing Unemployment Benefits for Workers in North Carolina

A reader from North Carolina sent along this jaw-dropping story about SEIU’s silent support for the North Carolina’s Chamber of Commerce and its campaign to slash unemployment benefits for hundreds of thousands of jobless workers.

North Carolina Policy Watch calls the campaign -- which will immediately affect 438,000 unemployed workers and their families -- “one of the most radical attacks on the unemployed in modern American history.”

This week, North Carolina’s legislature approved the draconian cuts, according to an article in the New York Times. The cuts will reduce weekly unemployment benefits by 35%, drop 170,000 of the state’s current jobless workers from benefit rolls, cut by as much as half the number of weeks for collecting benefits, and implement many other reductions.

Here’s what happened:

Last year, the North Carolina Chamber of Commerce and the Republican Party launched a campaign to gut the state’s system of unemployment benefits. In North Carolina, there happen to be lots of jobless workers: the state has the nation’s fifth highest unemployment rate at 9.2%.

In response, grassroots groups banded together to fight back. They include the North Carolina Justice Center, the National Employment Law Project, NAACP, National Council of Churches, National Organization of Women, Children First, the State AFL-CIO, Disability Rights North Carolina, and religious leaders. 

S. Lewis Ebert, CEO Chamber of Commerce

According to these groups, the Chamber’s legislation -- known as House Bill 4 -- will push many families “into extreme poverty.” One group called the bill “an unprecedented assault on struggling families” and “an evisceration of the state’s unemployment insurance system.” Here’s additional info on the bill.

What about SEIU?

SEIU is one of North Carolina’s largest labor unions. It represents 55,000 public-sector workers through a local called the State Employees Association of North Carolina (SEANC).

Now… it should be a no-brainer that a union would jump in and fight to protect the state’s system of unemployment benefits, right?

Well, not if you’re SEIU.

In fact… every union across North Carolina opposed the Chamber’s horrible cuts… except for SEIU. And that’s not all. SEIU’s Dana Cope (the Executive Director of SEANC) actually bragged about SEIU’s silent support for House Bill 4.

In the run-up to the legislature’s vote on the bill, advocacy organizations sent a tweet asking, “Could SEANC be the only union in North Carolina NOT opposed to House Bill 4”?  Cope responded: “Certainly the largest one with 55,000 members.” Here’s a copy of the exchange from Cope’s twitter page.

A reader in North Carolina writes: 

 I wonder, how many SEANC members have family members or friends who are unemployed and will lose everything when this bill becomes law?

The Chamber’s bill will have a particularly devastating impact on 170,000 jobless workers. Due to the ongoing recession, these workers are currently receiving extended unemployment benefits because there simply aren’t jobs for them to fill. Not much longer. Under the Chamber’s bill, all of these 170,000 workers will lose their benefits on July 1.

So why is SEIU taking a position that’s so contrary to workers’ interests? Tasty’s sources say that SEIU and Dana Cope likely cut a backroom deal with the Chamber of Commerce and the Republicans -- perhaps like the deal that SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan cut with the CEO of the hospital industry’s Chamber of Commerce in California.

In fact, in an earlier deal, Cope reportedly sold out the teachers’ union by allowing the North Carolina legislature to take away payroll deduction for union dues from the members of the North Carolina Association of Educators (an affiliate of the NEA) while preserving it for SEANC’s members.

SEIU's Dana Cope

From what Tasty can tell, it sounds like this is par for the course for Dana Cope. It turns out that Cope has an ego that’s the size of Texas. He features himself on his own personal website -- www.DanaCope.com – which gushes about his lengthy “entrepreneurial career” and fabulous accomplishments. It even features his personal blog.

Here are a few fun facts from Cope’s website: Did you know that Cope was a “Vice-President of the Texas Future Business Leaders”? He sure was! 

And that’s not all. He was also a member of the “Outstanding Young Men of America.” (Tasty is not kidding.) These and other stomach-churning facts are splashed across Cope’s website in nauseating detail.

It’s no surprise, then, that SEIU and this ego-maniac were so quick to sell out workers. In fact, Cope is a perfect match for the other egomaniacal, fat-cat officials who populate the Purple Palace. And since 2012, Cope has served as a Vice President on SEIU’s International Executive Board, a position formerly held by Tyrone Freeman. Looks like Cope will have a legendary career with his Purple Palace mates.