Associated Press

NEWARK, N.J. - Two leaders of a postal workers’ union were arrested Friday and accused of embezzling more than $400,000 from their organization.

The two men took the money from 2000 to October 2002 from the payroll account of Local 190 of the American Postal Workers Union in Clifton and the union account used to pay routine monthly expenses, according to a federal indictment handed up in Newark on Tuesday and unsealed with their arrests.

Local 190’s president, Gary Weightman, and secretary-treasurer, John McGovern, were each released on $100,000 bond, said Assistant U.S. Attorney V. Grady O’Malley.

Weightman lawyer Stephen F. Pellino, said his client didn’t take any money from the union.
“There may have been some sloppiness in the way books were kept … but he didn’t steal any money,” Pellino said.

Efforts to reach McGovern, 50, of Hawthorne, were not successful. No phone listing could be found, and O’Malley said no lawyer had been named yet for McGovern.

McGovern and Weightman, 53, of Keansburg, also are accused of obstructing an investigation by the Department of Labor and the Postal Workers International Union by destroying union financial records.

Both are postal workers. Weightman was arrested at 6 a.m. Friday as he finished his shift at the Northern New Jersey Logistics and Distribution Center in Kearny; McGovern was arrested at his home, prosecutors said.

Each faces one count of conspiracy and two embezzlement counts, all of which carry up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
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