SAN DIEGO (CNS) - A former U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer and ex-president of a local union for government employees pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal charge of filing a false financial report, which prosecutors say was intended to hide his embezzlement of thousands of dollars in union dues.
Felix Luciano, 61, of San Diego, served from 2011 to 2018 as president of American Federation of Government Employees Local 2805, which represents Department of Homeland Security and ICE employees in San Diego and Imperial counties.
The U.S. Attorney's Office says Luciano took union dues to pay for his personal expenses, including shopping, travel reimbursements, groceries, dining, dry cleaning, and paying for non-union accounts.
According to a grand jury indictment returned against Luciano, he used Local 2805's debit and credit cards to pay for these expenses and wrote checks to himself from the union's checking account.
Ultimately, $36,000 was taken from the union and as part of his plea, Luciano has agreed to repay that sum, plus pay a $10,000 fine.
Prosecutors say Luciano hid the embezzlement by falsifying the union's annual financial reports.
One such report in 2018 underreported how much money he received from the union, as well as the union's cash balance, which prosecutors allege was a bid to conceal stolen funds.
Luciano retired as the local's president in December 2018 in the course of an audit of Local 2805 by the Department of Labor's Office of Labor- Management Standards, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.
