Teamster ‘Ghost Worker’ to Plead Guilty
A potentially key figure in the government’s labor fraud case against Teamster President Jackie Presser agreed Tuesday to plead guilty to receiving $109,800 as a “ghost employee” of Presser’s hometown local in a scheme allegedly authorized by the union chief.
The agreement by Jack Nardi, filed in federal court in Cleveland, specified that he will testify as a government witness against Presser. The move indicates that prosecutors will press ahead with their case because they do not believe sworn statements by present and former FBI officials that they had instructed Presser to keep Nardi on the payroll of Teamster Local 507.
If such FBI authorization of Presser’s alleged action could be established, it would greatly weaken and possibly kill the Justice Department’s case charging that Presser and two union associates illegally siphoned $700,000 from the local to pay mob-related figures who were on the payroll but never did any work for the union.
Warning on Prosecution
Under the plea agreement, the Justice Department will not prosecute Nardi for any other crimes committed before Feb. 1 but warned that he will be prosecuted for perjury, giving false information or obstruction of justice if he “fails to provide such complete, truthful and candid information and testimony.”
Nardi’s agreement to plead guilty to two such “ghost worker” charges and other unrelated counts--involving defrauding E. F. Hutton & Co. in 1983 of nearly $40,000 and making false statements to obtain a U.S. passport--marks the latest of many turnarounds in the complicated and long-running Presser case.
Rather than detail Presser’s longtime role as an FBI informant, the Justice Department agreed in October, 1985, to release Nardi, even though he had pleaded guilty to the ghost worker charge. Nardi was seeking details of Presser’s FBI involvement in trying to set aside his guilty plea, though that information has since emerged, largely from Presser’s defense filings with the court.
Effect on Defense Unclear
It was not clear, however, whether Nardi’s latest decision to plead guilty will affect what has emerged as Presser’s main line of defense: that he kept Nardi on the Local 507 payroll in 1976 only at the direction of his FBI “handlers,” who feared that his father, John Nardi, might become angry.
The senior Nardi headed one of the underworld factions warring for control in Cleveland and was subsequently killed when a bomb exploded in his car.
After Jack Nardi was freed in 1985, he reiterated that he had taken $109,800 in a ghost employee scheme that he said was engineered by Presser.
“He (Presser) put me on the payroll,” Nardi told reporters then. “It’s obvious now that I was set up. I never knew about any connections with the FBI.”
Nardi, 46, had been living in California since 1985 and is now in Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Jail on state charges. Under the plea agreement, he faces a maximum term of five years’ imprisonment and a $23,000 fine.
Conspired to Embezzle
His plea agreement stated that from Jan. 1, 1972, to about April 9, 1979, he conspired with Presser and Teamster International Vice President Harold Friedman to embezzle about $300 a week from Local 507, which Presser and Friedman served as officers.
He also admitted soliciting a $20,000 payoff from Presser in 1982 to recant grand jury testimony he had given against Presser and to testify according to the union boss’ wishes or to “become unavailable as a witness” at future proceedings, according to the plea agreement.
Nardi, in an apparently unrelated charge, admitted to defrauding E. F. Hutton from March to September, 1983, by selling 1,666 shares of RB Industries Inc. that he and unnamed co-conspirators unlawfully possessed.
The government charged that the fraud involved false representations made to E. F. Hutton employees in Beverly Hills, Santa Ana, Calif., and Pepper Pike, Ohio. Nardi received $39,426 from E. F. Hutton’s Santa Ana branch on Sept. 6, 1983, according to the charge to which he agreed to plead guilty.