On February 21, Roody Lespinasse, former treasurer of United Steelworkers Local 04-421, was charged in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts with willfully failing to maintain financial records of the Brockton, Mass.-based union. He then pleaded guilty and agreed to pay restitution in the amount of $20,818. This case is connected to a larger one. Back in October 2010, Lespinasse and three other local officials, Stennett Bernard, Andy Alerte and Manuel Nogueira, were indicted for embezzling a combined roughly $7,000 in union funds by writing unauthorized checks. Both cases followed a probe by the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.
