WHAT A HEEL: Union Benefits Administrator Allegedly Benefitted Unduly
Melissa King, 58, $540,000 a year as a third-party fund administrator handling administrative functions for three employee benefit funds for the 400 members of the Laborers' Local Union No. 147 (AKA the Sandhogs, because they build tunnels). But she liked the ponies – not betting on them, owning them, and from 2002 through October 2008 she allegedly embezzled $42 million from the union’s employee benefit funds, reports The New York Times:
[S]he squired her teenage daughter to the nation’s elite equestrian events, building a stable of horses that would be the envy of any on the horse-show circuit. …
Prosecutors said much of [the money] was lavished on her personal life: more than $3 million in equestrian-related expenses, $7.3 million for American Express bills, $713,500 at a Southern California jewelry store and more than $300,000 at Neiman Marcus. …
The criminal complaint alleges that from 2004 through October 2008, Ms. King directed $2.3 million of union money to Heritage Farm, a stable in Katonah, N.Y., where her daughter trained and kept her horses until last year.
She now boards and trains a few miles away at Old Salem Farm, where Mayor Bloomberg’s daughter has also kept horses. Boarding a single horse there costs $3,000 a month, said Alan Bietsch, the stable’s general manager. …
The union declined to say what prompted its concern, but in October 2008 it notified Ms. King that it was ending their relationship of nearly 30 years. In June, the union filed a civil suit in United States Southern District Court.
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