The International Brotherhood of Boilermakers training fund had a cash shortfall. And the reason was that the money was going into the pockets of an executive assistant. On Monday, March 17, Angela Heninger, sales and marketing director/office manager for the fund, known as Mobilization, Optimization, Stabilization and Training Trust (MOST), was sentenced in Kansas City, Kan. federal court to 30 months in prison for embezzling more than $400,000 over a more than a half decade. She had pleaded guilty last August 22 to embezzlement after being charged in a superseding information count the previous day. Heninger also was ordered to pay $640,000 in restitution.
The Boilermakers union, as Union Corruption Update had noted at length in May 2012, pays its top people at Kansas City, Kansas headquarters lavishly. Angela Heninger, with a combined salary and benefits for 2011 of nearly $175,000, was no exception. Yet somehow she felt compelled to steal from MOST. Eventually, as the books didn’t balance, the IBB came to suspect as much. Union officials then contacted the Department of Labor to request a full investigation, and conducted its own probe as well. The conclusion in each case: From sometime in 2006 until early 2012, Heninger stole around $480,000.
Heninger was charged in April 2013 with one count of embezzlement, six counts of wire fraud and five counts of bank fraud totaling the rather understated sum of $50,000. That August 21, she was charged in a single superseding count of embezzling more than $400,000. She pleaded guilty the next day. According to Boilermakers General Counsel Michael Stapp, “MOST was able to recover all funds stolen by Ms. Heninger.” Job trainees no doubt are glad for that.