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John McGovern, 55, of Hawthorne, admitted that he and Gary Weightman – the former President of Local 190 of the North Jersey Division of the American Postal Workers International Union – conspired to embezzle the money from April 2000 through October 2002 from the union’s payroll account and a separate “operating” account.
McGovern and Weightman were elected to their union positions in 1992 and received their salaries directly from the union, the government said. Under the Union’s Constitution and by-laws, they were allowed only $3,000 above their basic postal worker’s salary while they held union office.
McGovern, who as Secretary-Treasurer controlled the financial transactions for Local 190, supplemented his income with sums of money far exceeding his annual $46,000 salary, issuing payments to himself of approximately $140,000 – as well as additional reimbursement checks over a two-and-a-half-year period, federal prosecutors said.
In addition to the prison term meted out in Newark on Tuesday, U.S. Distrrict Court Judge Faith S. Hochberg sentenced McGovern to three years of supervised release and ordered him to pay $783,931 in restitution.
Weightman, 58, of Keansburg, has pleaded guilty to tax evasion for failing to declare income he received as part of the scheme. He‘s scheduled to be sentenced by Hochberg June 10.
U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman credited special agents of the Department of Labor‘s Office of Labor-Management Standards for their work in making the case, which was handled by Assistant U.S. Attorneys V. Grady O’Malley and Leslie F. Schwartz, Senior Litigation Counsel, of the U.S. Attorney’s Organized Crime/Gangs Unit in Newark, and Jacob T. Elberg of the Health Care and Government Fraud Unit.
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