DETROIT — Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged Tim Edmunds, a former UAW official at Local 412 in Warren, Mich., with embezzling millions of dollars and spending it on "gambling, guns and cars," nearly two months after an internal union audit discovered the improper spending.
Edmunds is the 16th person charged in the ongoing scandal and first since a court-appointed monitor was installed this year to oversee the union as part of a corruption case settlement.
UAW President Ray Curry, when he was secretary-treasurer, instituted a new internal auditing process in an attempt to reform the union from within. In September, the union announced those auditors had discovered $2 million in improper expenditures at Local 412 and had suspended the financial secretary.