Ticket Agents’ Union Local F-72 president Frank Greenwald was one of sixteen individuals indicted July 24 in an alleged ticket scalping ring by Manhattan Dist. Atty. Robert Morgenthau and N.Y. Atty. Gen. Eliot Spitzer. The alleged conspiracy, composed of ticket brokers and Mets and Yankees box-office employees, scalped tickets with a face value of over $300,000 in 2000 alone.
Reportedly, the box-office employees took bribes from the brokers in return for handing over thousands of prime baseball tickets, including seats to the 1999 World Series. The brokers would resell the tickets or funnel them to street scalpers at large markups. A disgruntled fan tipped off officials after he recognized a guy selling tickets behind a box-office window as the same guy who had previously scalped a ticket to him outside the stadium.
Greenwald’s brother Richard, a union member, was also indicted. Both worked in the Yankees box-office. The 15-month probe resulted in charges ranging from misdemeanor bribing to second-degree grand larceny. [N.Y. Post 7/25/00]
Ohio Boss Sentenced for $34,000 Theft
On July 25, U.S. Dist. Judge John M. Manos sentenced Tracey Shugar, ex-secretary of Int’l Ass’n of Heat & Frost Insulators & Asbestos Workers Local 3 in Cleveland, to three years of probation for her $34,472 union embezzlement. He ordered Shugar be confined to her home during the first six months of the sentence.
Shugar’s attorney, Kreig J. Brusnahan, told Manos that “the lure of easy money and the temptation to gamble” caused her to steal from the union. Shugar pled guilty to one count of union embezzlement in Apr. 2000. Brusnahan said Shugar paid back $11,239 before pleading guilty and planned to pay the rest back immediately following sentencing. In the plea deal, Shugar admitted stealing the funds from Oct. 1996 to Jan. 1999 through salary checks and diverting funds that should have been deposited into union accounts. She used the funds for herself and her family.
“It hurts that someone whom you put so much trust in does this,” said Dennis Maloney, one of four union members who was at the sentencing. “This disrupts everything.”
Patrick Corrigan, a union member, said the sentence was fair, but he would have liked to see her fined. “I don’t want to see anyone go to prison. But some of the guys wanted to hang her,” he said. [Plain Dealer 7/26/00]