Like many embezzlers, William H. Good, Jr., former secretary-treasurer for Local Lodge 821 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, had a gambling problem. Now he’s getting some help, courtesy of federal court. Good, 57, a resident of Lucerne Valley, pleaded guilty in October to two felony counts of embezzlement totaling $3,500. But that sum was a mere fraction of his total theft of $192,469 over a nearly six-year period ending in August 2004. Good had written 229 fraudulent checks drawn on the Ontario, Calif.-based local’s bank account. To cash most of them, he forged the signatures of other local executive board members. In 1999, with his scam underway, he convinced the board to send union bank statements to his home address.
The U.S. District Court for the Central District of California on January 23 sentenced Good to 18 months imprisonment plus 36 months of supervised release and ordered him to make full restitution. Because his embezzlement primarily was intended to cover gambling losses, the court also ordered him to obtain and install, at his own expense, monitoring software on his computer to ensure against visiting gambling websites. The sentencing follows a joint investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and Office of Inspector General. (OLMS, 2/16/06; U.S. Department of Justice, 10/24/05).