Local 594 of the International Association of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental and Reinforcing Iron Workers no longer is active, but it still has some unfinished business. On May 29, two of the Bethlehem, Pa.-area union’s former officers, Scott Gehringer and Alex Margaritis, were indicted in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on charges of embezzling a combined sum of more than $16,000. According to documents filed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Meehan, Gehringer and Margaritis, respectively, former president and financial secretary, diverted the money from a union checking account during July 2005-May 2006. Prosecutors did not specify the name of the company whose workers the union represented, except to say that it is in “an industry affecting interstate commerce.”
As Local 594 president, Gehringer was a signatory to the union checking account at Keystone Savings Bank, now known as Keystone Nazareth Bank and Trust, in Bethlehem. The pair embezzled $3,050 and then another $13,320. Each defendant was charged with embezzlement, plus aiding and abetting. The indictments follow a probe by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards. (Allentown Morning Call, 6/5/08; OLMS, 6/21/08).