Jury deliberating in trial of electrician’s union leader Buzzy Dressel BY PETER J. SAMPSON Former North Jersey labor leader Richard “Buzzy” Dressel hired his future wife to prepare meals for an unnecessary lunch program and then paid her twice, stealing more than $300,000 from his union over five years, a prosecutor said Friday in closing arguments. The trustees of the apprentice training fund were told their new lunch program “would cost $8 per person per day, and that’s what they signed off on,” Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O’Malley told a jury in federal court in Newark. Though hired as a service provider by the apprentice fund, Kathleen Libonati, a caterer, was also paid $1,000 a week, plus benefits, as a member of Dressel’s office staff at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 164 in Paramus — a job in which she did nothing, O’Malley said. “He was padding the pockets of his girlfriend, first and foremost, and also of himself because she was living with him at the time,” O’Malley said of Dressel. Dressel’s lawyer, Jeffrey D. Smith, countered that the government’s allegations were simply not true and certainly not proven. Libonati was hardly a no-show, he said. She worked diligently by all accounts as the union’s caterer and running the lunch program for the trainees four days a week, he said — “Kathy Libonati Dressel did not embarrass herself or Mr. Dressel, and she made sure that she earned her paychecks,” Smith told the jury. After seven days of testimony and arguments over two weeks, the jury began its deliberations late in the afternoon. The panel considered the case for about 90 minutes without reaching a verdict before it was dismissed until Monday. Dressel, 64, of Montvale, the former business manager, and John M. DeBouter, 56, of Oakland, the local’s former president and training director, were indicted last year on eight counts of conspiracy and embezzlement in an alleged scheme to fraudulently provide multiple sources of income to Libonati. From 2008 to 2012, the government alleges, Libonati was paid about $339,000 in unearned income for office staff duties that she failed to perform and that provided no legitimate benefit to the union or its members. Libonati, 56, who testified for the defense on Thursday, was named as a co-conspirator but not charged in the indictment. She pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor embezzlement charge last year for submitting a $78 health care claim weeks before she was eligible for union coverage. DeBouter and Libonati were both in court on Friday as the summations were delivered. DeBouter had been severed from the trial last week after his lawyer collapsed in the courtroom and had to undergo surgery for a brain aneurysm. Libonati started out at $46,000 a year and was given a raise by the local to $86,000 in 2009 shortly before she was assigned the part-time task of managing the union’s office building. Smith argued that the fee of $8 per student per day paid by the training fund was reimbursement for Libonati’s expenses for food, supplies and a helper for the lunch program. He said the salary she received from the local was her compensation for running the lunch program, catering union events, other duties related to political and charitable activities and from 2009 on as the building manager. Smith reminded jurors of testimony from the local’s longtime labor counsel, Albert Kroll. Kroll testified that as head of the union, Dressel had the authority to hire whomever he wanted for his staff without going to the executive board and that there were no union rules prohibiting the hiring of a family member, Smith said. Smith also argued that there was “nothing unusual” about the decision in 2010 of the training fund trustees to reimburse the local for half of Libonati’s salary up to that point, a sum of $108,000, and to split her salary going forward. O’Malley argued the check was “taken” from the training fund and used to pay an overdue bill before trustees received a requested legal opinion from Kroll on the legality of the money transfer. Smith countered there was “nothing nefarious about trying to help pay a bill.” He argued this was “not a raid” on the training fund and said O’Malley’s attempt to portray it as a “strong-arm event” is “preposterous.” Dressel, who has served on the boards of the state Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority, Bergen Community College and the Hackensack University Medical Center Foundation, did not seek reelection to his union post in June. Smith told the jurors there was no way to undo the damage to Dressel’s reputation but they “can give him his life back.”
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 01:47:43 +0000
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