Former Senior UAW Official Pleads Guilty to Taking Over $1.5 Million in Bribes and Kickbacks
Michael Grimes, a former high-level official in the UAW’s General Motors Department, pleaded guilty today to conspiring with other UAW officials to engage in honest services fraud by taking over $1.5 million in bribes and kickbacks from UAW vendors and contractors and to conspiring to launder the proceeds of the scheme announced U.S. Attorney Matthew Schneider.
Joining in the announcement were Irene Lindow, Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Department of Labor – Office of Inspector General, Rainer S. Drolshagen, Acting Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit, Michigan office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Manny Muriel, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit, Michigan office of the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations, and Thomas Murray, District Director, U.S. Department of Labor – Office of Labor-Management Standards.
Michael Grimes, 65, of Ft. Myers, Florida, who is a native of Grand Blanc, Michigan, pleaded guilty to conspiring to engage in honest services wire fraud and to conspiring to launder money between 2006 and 2018. During the plea hearing, Grimes admitted that he conspired with two other high-level UAW officials in the UAW’s GM Department to take millions of dollars in bribes and kickbacks from vendors doing business with the joint UAW-GM Center for Human Resources. The Center for Human Resources is supposed to be a center for training UAW workers employed by GM. Grimes and the other UAW officials served on the Executive Board for the Center for Human Resources, and they were responsible for approving contracts with the vendors. Grimes admitted that over the course of the twelve year conspiracy, he and the other two UAW officials demanded bribes and kickbacks from the vendors in exchange for securing or maintaining contracts with the Center for Human Resources or with the UAW’s GM Department.
Grimes and his co-conspirators took bribes and kickbacks from the vendors in exchange for contracts with the UAW and/or the Center for Human Resources for watches, jackets, backpacks, and UAW stores at GM manufacturing facilities. For example, in 2011, Grimes and two other UAW officials demanded that a vendor give them a $300,000 kickback on a $6 million contract to purchase 50,000 jackets emblazoned with “Team UAW-GM.” Grimes collected the $300,000 kickback and delivered the proceeds to two other UAW officials. In addition, Grimes demanded an additional kickback for $525,000 from the same vendor for the same jacket contract.
Read more: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/former-senior-uaw-official-pleads-guilty-taking-over-15-million-bribes-and-kickbacks