Teresa Cora Luna isn’t going to Disneyland – not as a union official anyway. On October 6, Luna, formerly bookkeeper/office manager of International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) Local 504, was sentenced in federal court to five months in prison for embezzling $67,416 in funds from the union. She also will have to pay full restitution. The union represents about 300 stage production workers at Disneyland in Anaheim, California.
Luna, now 35, a resident of Anaheim, during November 2004-June 2005 allegedly printed out more than three dozen checks from an IATSE checking account and made them out payable to herself. To make the theft convincing, she forged the signatures of two other union officers. She was fired in 2005 shortly after discovery that funds were missing, and eventually was charged and pleaded guilty in September 2008. Luna faced up to five years in prison, but U.S. District Judge David O. Carter gave her a lighter sentence in a less restrictive lockup so she could see her children more often. The sentencing follows an investigation by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.