On June 16, Cathy Byers, former treasurer of American Federation of Teachers Local 6540, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia to one count of wire fraud of about $22,000 from the Ronceverte (Greenbrier County), W.Va.-based union. The state AFT chapter had discovered multiple purchases “unrelated to the business” of the union, and listed out these transactions as part of a January 10, 2019 letter to Byers and the local president, Jayne Ford. Byers soon admitted that she had used union funds for personal expenditures. Ford was not charged. The guilty plea follows a probe by the U.S. Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and Office of Inspector General.