Tracey Tigner might not have gotten the leniency she wanted, but her punishment won’t exactly be severe either. On July 10, Tigner, former office secretary for International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT) District Council 91, was sentenced in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana to three months in prison for embezzling $30,462 in funds from a council affiliate, IUPAT Local 460, based in Merrillville, Ind. (Lake County). She had been indicted in February, and pleaded guilty in April.
Prosecutors had charged that Tigner, 41, a resident of Gary, during the period August 2009-December 2011 had written unauthorized checks and made unauthorized use of the union credit card to make personal purchases. Her attorney had argued that due to the nonviolent nature of the offense, an appropriate sentence would be probation but with no prison time. The judge rejected the request. In addition to serving a three-month sentence, Tigner also will have to make full restitution. The actions follow an investigation by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards.