Zona Albritton submitted bid proposals and invoices on behalf of her union. That was until the union discovered the true beneficiary of these awards – herself. On June 26, Albritton was sentenced to one year in prison in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for embezzling slightly over $75,000 in funds from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Albritton, manager of general services for AFSCME, the nation’s largest public employees’ union, was charged in March and pleaded guilty in April. She’ll also have to pay restitution.
Prosecutors had charged that Albritton, 48, a resident of suburban Maryland, during September 2003-March 2004 submitted several false bid proposals and invoices to the Washington, D.C.-based union. She then made out checks to a fictitious company and deposited them into an account she controlled. The scheme fell apart when one of the checks was returned indicating an insufficient address. The sentencing follows an investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. (Associated Press, 6/26/08; OLMS, 7/7/08).