The independent investigations officer charged with monitoring the International Brotherhood of Teamsters said Wednesday that the union’s former political director, Nicole Brener-Schmitz, should be charged with embezzlement and other crimes. The allegations involve filing 564 false receipts from 2013 through 2015 for Uber rides totaling more than $11,000.
Joseph diGenova, the official in charge of carrying out a 1989 court-ordered consent decree to monitor the Teamsters for corruption and a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, recommended the charges in a letter Wednesday to Teamsters President James P. Hoffa. Under the terms of the consent decree, Hoffa has 90 days to respond.
“She engaged in a scheme to embezzle from the IBT based on the submission of false information and false documents she provided. She received a receipt from Uber for every one of these charges. She never submitted the actual receipt to the IBT. She only submitted those she fabricated,” IIO’s report said.
Teamsters spokesman Brett Caldwell said Brener-Schmitz, whose job involved maintaining the union’s relations with elected officials, no longer worked for the IBT. “We have an internal procedure to handle allegations and charges such as these, and she will be afforded due process,” Caldwell said.
J. Bruce Maffeo, Brener-Schmitz’s attorney, called the charges “nonsense,” arguing it was little more than a bookkeeping dispute and his client was guilty of nothing worse than “keeping sloppy records.”
Maffeo said Brener-Schmitz did create receipts, but only to replace other receipts for business expenses that she didn’t keep. “Look, this is somebody who operated out of a suitcase, traveling around the country for the better part of two election cycles,” he said.
The Independent Investigations Office declined to comment on the filing.
This is the latest allegation of corruption at the Teamsters’ headquarters from the IIO. Last week, diGenova recommended to Hoffa that charges be filed against Secretary-Treasurer Ken Hall, the IBT’s No. 2 official. DiGenova’s office is running an extensive corruption investigation involving financial improprieties by the union’s top officials. He alleged last week that Hall was obstructing the probe.
Hoffa and Hall are running for re-election to their offices. The election, a mail-ballot, will conclude Nov. 14.
“With every revelation, it appears that the corruption goes to the top,” said Ken Paff, national organizer for Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a dissident group within the union opposed to Hoffa’s leadership.
The charges against Brener-Schmitz are ironic because the Teamsters, who represent drivers at many traditional cab companies, have been trying for years to organize Uber’s drivers. The charging documents show that Brener-Schmitz regularly used the non-union service. Her use of the service came to light in January when diGenova’s office issued a subpoena to Uber for its records.
DiGenova also recommended that Brener-Schmitz be charged with violations of federal record-keeping laws, receiving illegal loans from the union because she was allowed to pay back some charges without interest, defrauding the union by writing checks to it that she knew would bounce, and receiving illegal gifts from an organization that the Teamsters donated to, which is a conflict of interest. The bounced check charges are felonies under D.C. law.
According to diGenova’s letter to Hoffa, Brener-Schmitz took receipts that were for non-work-related activity and altered the information so they could be submitted as work expenses. “She manipulated the dates, times and locations on the Uber receipt she fabricated so the facts of the actual Uber rides and other Uber transactions she charged to her union card were concealed from the IBT.”
She would, for example, allegedly turn weekend rides into weekday ones in order to submit them as a business expense. She also allegedly created false receipts for Uber trips she never took in order to get the union to pay for cancellations of rides.
Her expense reports were flagged several times by Teamsters accountants, and her official union credit card for business expenses was suspended on three occasions. On at least two occasions, she submitted personal checks to pay the union back for improper charges, only to have the checks bounce due to insufficient funds.
