Obstructed An Investigation Of Corrupt Council Employees

In November of 2004 The Unity Team obstructed an investigation by former Independent Investigator, Walter Mack (pictured) of corrupt district council employees who were destroying shop stewards reports for cash payoffs by corrupt contractors in an effort to defraud our benefit funds.

Walter Mack was hindered (and later fired) in his ability to determine how and to what extent these contractors were able to avoid detection of their routine CBA violations for such a long time. To date the full extent of this corruption is unknown!

On June 3, 2005 Walter Mack filed a report on Tri-Built Construction, Inc. a corrupt drywall contractor that operated in New York City and Long Island. Because of Walter Mack's investigation Tri-Builts owners were each sentenced to five years in federal prison on July 10, 2008 for conspiring to defraud the Carpenters Union benefit funds of millions of dollars.

Patrick Noel McCaul and James Dermot McGonnel were indicted in December 2006 and pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2007.

McCaul and McConnel admitted that from 1993 through May 2004, they conspired to defraud the Carpenters Union and its benefit funds by paying workers cash, at non-union rates, without any benefits or tax withholdings. They also employed non-union carpenters in violation of their agreement with the union. These practices enabled McCaul and McGonnell to underbid jobs, knowing that Tri-Built never intended to comply with its collective bargaining and prevailing wage obligations. To avoid detection of their fraud, the defendants bribed Carpenters Union shop stewards to submit false reports, under-reporting the true number of carpenters and hours worked on several Tri-Built jobsites.

McCaul and McGonnell also paid a then-employee of the Carpenters Union benefit funds to destroy internal union records that might reveal the fraud if an audit of Tri-Built were conducted by the union. They diverted at least $6.5 million from the union benefit funds through their fraudulent conduct.

Below are exerts from the Walter Mack's June 5, 2005 report:

The following report to the Court, my fifth report as Independent Investigator ("II") for the District Council of New York City and Vicinity of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners ("the District Council"), summarizes the findings to date of my investigation into one contractor’s practice of paying cash, "off the books," to a large number of Carpenters it employed. It is critical to note that the findings discussed in this report are not complete and it is imperative, in my view, that an outside investigator pursue the subjects raised in this report with vigor and without further delay. I am hopeful that my successor can ascertain the full nature and extent of the corruption that permitted Tri-Built Construction, Inc. (“Tri-Built”) to pay many of its Carpenters off the books for years, evading detection despite a cash payment methodology that invited discovery.

Unlike Boom Construction, Inc., which I examined in a report originally submitted on April 15 Tri-Built did not always bribe Carpenter shop stewards in its employ to omit from the shop steward reports the names and/or hours of Carpenters working for the company. Although Tri-Built's owners did bribe at least three shop stewards to keep some Carpenters' names off shop steward reports, they also paid an estimated $150,000 to a person or persons associated with the District Council's Benefit Funds, to arrange for the removal or modification of shop steward reports from District Council files.

This internal corruption contributed to the long delay in the discovery of Tri-Built's wrongdoing. At the current stage of the investigation, it is impossible to know how many other contractors were able to cheat the District Council and the Benefit Funds with this crude but effective methodology, but I am certain that others exist.

Unfortunately, I have been stymied in my attempts to explore how and with whose assistance a corrupt employee would be able to remove shop steward reports from the District Council’s offices.

The union membership deserves to have this information. I regret that I was not permitted to provide it, and I hope that my successor accepts this responsibility.

To read Walter Mack's full Tri-Built Report click here.

This is why you cannot trust anything The Unity Team says!