A federal prosecutor on Wednesday laid out allegations of no-show bank jobs, $400,000 hunting trips and $1.5 million severance packages in the racketeering conspiracy trial of former Boilermakers union executives. The government’s witness, Bank of Labor President Robert McCall, told jurors that top union officials drew full-time pay from the union-owned bank even though they rarely showed up for work.
McCall said former Boilermakers International President Newton Jones earned $498,000 a year from the bank, while ex-Secretary-Treasurer William Creeden earned $442,000 a year. He testified that Jones came to the Kansas City-area bank only three or four times a year and that it was “virtually impossible” for Jones or Creeden to have worked the 80 hours per pay period their stubs claimed.
The testimony gave jurors a financial picture of a case built around the Boilermakers union and the Bank of Labor, where prosecutors say compensation and spending arrangements blurred the line between union service and private benefit. Jones, his wife Kateryna, Creeden and former International Vice President Lawrence McManamon were indicted in August 2024 and are on trial now, while three other defendants, including Jones’ son Cullen, have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing in June and July.
McCall also described pheasant hunting trips to Paul Nelson Farm in South Dakota that were paid for by the union and the bank together. He recalled the last bill as a little north of $400,000 and said attendees flew there by private plane. Separately, jurors heard about a January 2023 board proposal that would have handed Jones and Creeden golden parachutes of $1.5 million each if union ownership of the bank changed, set at 2.99 times their base compensation.
The proposal was approved before the board knew Jones and Creeden were under grand jury investigation, a detail that deepens the government’s claim that the bank’s oversight failed from within. Under cross-examination, defense attorney Andino Reynal said McCall had been identified as a target of the federal investigation in January 2024, but McCall strongly denied that his testimony was shaped by any desire to avoid indictment. The trial now turns on whether jurors believe the compensation and spending were part of an illegal scheme or merely aggressive, if highly unusual, union-bank arrangements.
For Jones and the others still facing the jury, the government has already shown the outline of its case: lavish travel, generous pay and severance promises tied to control of a bank they did not appear to be working for in any ordinary sense. The remaining question is whether the defense can persuade jurors that those arrangements, however extravagant, do not amount to racketeering conspiracy.
