A federal grand jury has indicted a former Greeley meat workers’ union official on charges of spending $22,514 of union money on Las Vegas hotel rooms, expensive dinners, baseball games and satellite television.
Stephen L. Bush, 43, former vice president of the now-disbanded Local 990 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International, faces 51 counts of embezzlement of funds from a labor organization.
Bush was indicted late Monday, and the charges were made public Tuesday. He remains free and will be advised in U.S. District Court in Denver next month. He faces up to five years in prison if convicted.
Labor Department officials have been investigating Local 990, which once represented about 2,800 meat-plant workers in Greeley, for several years.
Last year, Bush’s sister, Barbara Ann Hayes, a bookkeeper with Local 990, pleaded guilty to embezzlement.
Prosecutors said she forged checks to steal $27,248 of the union’s money.
Their father, Ron Bush, the former president of Local 990, also reportedly has been under investigation in the embezzlement probe, though he has not been charged.
Neither Stephen nor Ron Bush could be reached Tuesday.
Another bookkeeper for the local, Grace Gonzales Maldonado, pleaded guilty last year to embezzlement after the government charged her with stealing $11,206 from the union.
Hayes and Gonzales Maldonado both received reduced sentences after cooperating with officials in the investigation.
The complaint filed by the U.S. attorney in Denver details 51 transactions in which Stephen Bush allegedly used union money for personal expenditures.
The charges were made on a union credit card and included $526.99 at Mandalay Bay Resort in Las Vegas, $427.47 at Fisherman’s Restaurant in Seattle, and $520.41 at Kaufman’s Big & Tall suit shop in Englewood.
Workers at what is now the Swift meatpacking plant in Greeley alerted international union officials to problems at Local 990 several years ago, said Ernie Duran, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Local 7.
The union investigated and later contacted the government, he said. The union disbanded Local 990, and last year the workers voted to join Local 7.
“International was outraged by it, and the members were outraged by it,” Duran said of the embezzlement scandal.
Staff writer Greg Griffin can be reached at 303-820-1241 or ggriffin@denverpost.com.
