A Regional Director of the United Auto Workers was arrested and charged with embezzling union funds and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on golf clubs, golf equipment and apparel purchased at club and resort pro shops during conferences. An investigative report showed that internal documents set the price of playing golf with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been mentioned as a possible Republican Presidential candidate in 2024, as $25,000 in a foursome and $100,000 for a one-on-one round.
A Regional Director of the United Auto Workers (UAW) has been arrested and charged with embezzling union funds and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on golf clubs, golf equipment and apparel, along with cigars, villa rentals and more, U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider said in a release issued on September 12, station WXYZ ABC 7 of Detroit, Mich. reported
Vance Pearson, 58, of St. Charles, Mo., was arrested on September 12 and charged with several crimes including conspiracy, embezzlement of union funds, money laundering and wire fraud, WXYZ reported.
Pearson is a member of the UAW Board and was elected as its Region 5 director in June 2018. Region 5 covers thousands of UAW members from Missouri and 16 states southwest of Missouri, including California, WXYZ reported.
According to a criminal complaint unsealed on September 12, Pearson conspired with other UAW officials to embezzle money from the union to benefit himself and other officials, WXYZ reported. That happened, the feds say, by concealing personal expenditures in the cost of the UAW Region 5 conferences that were held in Palm Springs, Coronado, Calif., and Missouri.
Between 2014 and 2018, the federal prosecutors charged, Pearson and other officials submitted fake expense forms seeking reimbursement from the UAW Detroit headquarters for the leadership and training conferences. Pearson and co-conspirators used the conferences to conceal the use of hundreds of thousands of dollars in UAW funds for personal expenditures that included buying sets of golf clubs, individual golf clubs and other golf equipment costing thousand of dollars, the charges said.
Specifically, Pearson and other officials spent more than $100,000 to buy golf clothing, shirts, hats, sunglasses, golf bills, jackets, shorts and more from various pro shops at club and resort properties in California and Missouri, the charges said.
“Pearson and the conspirators spent tens of thousands of dollars in UAW funds at the Indian Canyons golf course in Palm Springs on green fees for golfing outside of the time periods covered by the UAW Region 5 conferences that were used to conceal the extravagant personal spending of UAW funds,” the federal prosecutors’ news release said.
According to the complaint, Pearson and other officials spent hundreds of thousands in UAW funds to rent villas with individual pools for high-ranking union officials for long periods of time outside of the dates for the conferences, WXYZ reported. Funds were also used to pay for meals at high-end restaurants.
The complaint also said that Pearson and others embezzled over $60,000 to buy boxes of cigars, humidors, cigar cutters and lighters from 2014-2018.
During search warrants executed last week, the federal prosecutors say that they recovered dozens of cigars, humidors, hundreds of high-end bottles of liquor, hundreds of golf shirts, multiple sets of golf clubs and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, WXYZ reported.
Pearson was arrested in Missouri and is expected to make an initial appearance in federal court before being arraigned in Detroit.
In a special investigative report, the Tampa Bay Times found that internal documents from the political committee of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican who has been mentioned as a possible Presidential candidate for 2024, established a price for lobbyists and potential donors to play golf in a foursome with DeSantis at $25,000, and for a one-on-one round at $100,000.
The Times reported specifically about a round of golf that was scheduled in February 2019 at Indian Creek (Fla.) for three lobbyists from Duke Energy, to give the utility’s representatives a change to get face time with DeSantis—who was elected as Governor in an extremely tight race with Tallahassee (Fla.) Mayor Andrew Gillum in November 2018 that required a machine recount—shortly after he took office.
Internal documents obtained by the Times revealed that the Duke Energy lobbyists didn’t just request the governor’s time, they were supposed to pay for it, too.
“Is this the one that is $25k per?” asked the chair of DeSantis’ political committee, Susan Wiles, in February e-mails referencing the upcoming round of golf, the Times reported.
“A little more—Duke is going to do $100k,” responded the committee’s finance consultant, Heather Barker.
Days after the golf outing, Duke made a $75,000 donation to the Republican Party of Florida, which Wiles described in a memo as “interchangeable” with DeSantis’ political committee, the Times reported.
Other documents reviewed by the Times established prices that donors could pay to interact with DeSantis or his wife, Casey. Those documents established the price for golfing with him in a foursome at $25,000 and for a one-on-one round at $100,000.
The governor’s office would not make DeSantis available for an interview for the Times’ report and his spokeswoman, Helen Aguirre Ferré, declined to comment, the Times reported. In a statement e-mailed to the newspaper, Wiles said the fundraising plan was a proposal and was never set into motion. “It would be false and grossly unfair to Gov. DeSantis to assume that any of the ideas proposed in this memo were ever implemented,” Wiles told the Times.
But memos and campaign finance records suggest that DeSantis did deploy elements of the proposed strategy, the Times reported, and that he has kept his golf game sharp while meeting with lobbyists, business leaders and donors on the course, just as the fundraising plan suggested.
Days after his outing with the Duke lobbyists, DeSantis returned to Indian Creek CC and he was joined by two corporate executives, Bryon Ehrhart of Aon and Roger Desjadon of Florida Peninsula Insurance Co., the Times reported. The purpose was to “discuss future support,” according to an itinerary obtained by the Times, and his golf partners were described as “New Money.”
A month after the round, Ehrhart donated $10,000 to Friends of Ron DeSantis, the governor’s political committee. Reached by phone, Ehrhart told the Times the contribution was not connected to the golf round with the governor.
Ehrhart’s only other comment about playing with DeSantis, the Times reported, was that “He [DeSantis] hit the ball a mile.”
There is no record of Desjadon donating to DeSantis or any other Florida Republicans since the round of golf, the Times reported.
Duke Energy spokeswoman Ana Gibbs declined to describe what was discussed when the company’s three lobbyists golfed with DeSantis. “All political contributions made by Duke Energy come from shareholders, not customers,” Gibbs told the Times.
The Times asked DeSantis’ office for a list of all his golf partners since his inauguration in January 2019, but his office did not respond, the newspaper reported.
Tell Us What You Think!
You must be logged in to post a comment.