NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — The president of a Long Island construction union and 10 other officials enriched themselves at the expense of the workers they represented by accepting bribes from a non-union contractor, the DOJ announced on Monday.
James Cahill, the former president of the New York State Building and Construction Trades Council, pleaded guilty alongside Christopher Kraft, Patrick Hill, Matthew Norton, William Brian Wangerman, Kevin McCarron, Jeremy Sheeran, Andrew McKeon, Robert Egan, Scott Roche and Arthur Gipson to various charges relating to the bribes.
Between October 2018 and October 2020, the officials accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from an unnamed construction business.
In exchange for the bribes, Locals 638 and 200 supported company contract bids, signed on to labor agreements that paid workers lower rates and allowed the business to falsely claim it employed union workers.
Cahill admitted to accepting almost $150,000.
“The defendants exploited their union positions and hard-working union members to feed their own greed,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. “They accepted bribes to corruptly favor non-union employers and influence the construction trade in New York.”
Cahill, Craft and Hill each face up to 20 years in prison for honest services fraud conspiracy.
Norton, Wangerman, Sheeran, McKeon, Egan and Gipson face as much as five years in prison for felony Taft-Hartley Act Violation.
McCarron and Roche face up to a year in prison each for misdemeanor Taft-Hartley Act Violation.
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