The fact that the former head of a California labor union and her husband were charged last week with tax fraud, embezzlement, and perjury is indicative of the potential for corruption in the state’s largest government union, according to a national watchdog organization.
“The Freedom Foundation is interested in informing employees about the unions’ common practice of taking people's money without their consent, turning around and spending it on political issues like trying to defeat the recall against Governor Newsom and doing all this shady stuff,” said Timothy Snowball, an attorney with the Freedom Foundation. “Now it looks like they are even lining their own pockets with it.”
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) California executive director Alma Hernández and her spouse, Jose Moscoso, are accused of felonies, including evading taxation on the whole of their $1.4 million income over a five-year time period. Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filed a complaint on Oct. 4 alleging that the couple used a 2014 Senate political action committee to pay themselves for services that Moscoso did not complete.
“SEIU has a long laundry list of corruption, including criminal activities,” Snowball told the Southern California Record. “Alma Hernandez is not the first individual to be charged with this kind of criminal fraud amongst the ranks of leadership at SEIU and so, unfortunately, something like this comes as no surprise to the Freedom Foundation, which has been speaking about these issues for a long, long time.”
The Freedom Foundation encourages public workers to refuse to pay for the political speech of government unions.
"Organizations like SEIU California are no longer functioning as traditional labor unions," Snowball said. “These are pseudo arms of the state. They use the power of state law to compel people to make these payments.”
Hernandez and Moscoso were booked into the Sacramento County Main Jail, according to media reports, and a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9.
“The salary Mrs. Hernandez is collecting for her role as leader of SEIU California comes directly from membership dues payments collected from rank-and-file members and now she's not even paying taxes,” Snowball said in an interview. “That's part of the charge is her under-reporting her own income and having underpaid taxes by something like a hundred thousand dollars.”
The complaint states, "It is further alleged as to Counts 4 through 8, that the offenses are related felonies, a material element of which is fraud, which involved a pattern of related felony conduct, and the pattern of related felony conduct resulted in the loss by the California Franchise Tax Board of more than one hundred thousand dollars ($100,000), thus subjecting Alma Delia Hernandez and Jose Samoyoa Moscoso to the additional punishment provided for in Penal Code sections 186.11(a)(3).
Hernández also allegedly failed to pay unemployment insurance taxes.
“It was $6 million that SEIU California contributed to defeat the recall effort and help Gavin Newsom keep his job,” Snowball said. “So, Gavin Newsom has personally benefited from having SEIU as an ally and then his own attorney general is turning around and prosecuting SEIU’s former president. Looking at that, it’s easy to conclude that the evidence of malfeasance in this case against Hernandez must be overwhelming.”