Ex-chief of staff testifies former president blew union funds on travel, family jobs
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Tyler Brown testified Jones used union funds for luxury overseas trips and 5-star hotels.
- Brown said Jones hired family members into paid union roles with little documented duties.
- Jones and others were indicted in August 2024 on racketeering conspiracy charges.
For hours on Tuesday, the former Boilermakers chief of staff and special assistant to ousted International President Newton Jones described luxury overseas trips with stays in five-star hotels, high-paying jobs for family members, daylong winery tours and unmonitored use of union credit cards.
All, Tyler Brown said, courtesy of Jones and the International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.
“Whatever he wanted to do, he did,” said Brown, who testified on the seventh day of the racketeering conspiracy trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas.
Brown was testifying as a government witness after pleading guilty in May 2024 to one count of racketeering conspiracy involving the alleged theft of union funds. He was the first union official to be charged as part of an extensive federal investigation.
Four other ex-Boilermakers, including Newton Jones, are now on trial on charges alleging they conspired to use the union as their personal piggy banks, embezzling millions that went toward salary and benefits for no-show jobs, extravagant international travel, fine dining, vacation payouts and unauthorized loans.
Attorneys for the defendants contend that the government doesn’t have the evidence to prove there was intent to join a criminal racketeering conspiracy beyond a reasonable doubt. They also argue that the defendants’ actions were in accordance with the union’s constitution. The government’s investigation, they say, shows that union officers were trying to do their jobs, which included building a worldwide brand and attracting mergers.
Newton Jones — who was removed from office by his executive council in 2023 for allegedly misusing union funds — and his wife, Kateryna; former International Secretary-Treasurer William Creeden; and former International Vice President Lawrence McManamon are among seven former union members indicted in August 2024 for conspiracy to commit offenses under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, as well as other felonies.
Two others who were charged in the case pleaded guilty in March to one count of racketeering conspiracy and one count of embezzlement from a labor organization.
Warren Fairley — who took over for a short stint as Boilermakers president in 2023 after Jones was removed — and Jones’ son, Cullen Jones, are scheduled for sentencing on June 30.
The other defendant, Kathy Stapp, of Shawnee — the union’s former human resources director-turned International Secretary-Treasurer — pleaded guilty in December 2024 to one count of racketeering conspiracy. Her sentencing is scheduled for July 7.
Never saw Jones at union headquarters
Brown, who has a law degree but lost his license to practice in several states because of his conviction, said he started working for the Boilermakers union in 2010. In 2018, he said, Newton Jones appointed him chief of staff, but he also kept his other job titles, including special assistant to the international president.
In the 12 years he worked for the union, Brown said, “I have no memory of seeing President Newton Jones at Boilermakers headquarters.” Jones lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
The union’s headquarters was in Kansas City, Kansas, for more than a century, but relocated to Kansas City in 2023.
Brown said the union used American Express credit cards, and several executives and a few staff members — including Kateryna Jones — had them. He said one staff member used the card to fly her dog on trips. When he wrote her a letter questioning it, he said, Newton Jones told him “to stand down.”
Brown said he never saw Newton Jones’ expenses and never tried to verify any of Newton or Kateryna Jones’ charges on their Amex cards to determine whether the charges had a union purpose.
According to the union’s constitution, Brown said, the expenses for Newton Jones and Creeden were to be approved by the union’s International Executive Council. But he said Newton Jones directed him to remove that process from the executive council’s meeting agendas.
The International Executive Council was required by the constitution to meet at least twice a year, Brown said. He said the minutes of those meetings were kept in a locked room in Newton Jones’ office and were brought to the union’s general convention — held in Las Vegas once every five years — for delegates to read.
Prosecutor Vincent Falvo asked if that meant minutes from a meeting in January 2016 would not be released for viewing until July 2021.
“Correct,” Brown said.
‘The Ukrainian has landed’
Brown described numerous international trips that Newton Jones and other union members went on, some for international executive council meetings and others for various conferences. He said there were times when meetings Jones was to preside at were delayed because he was late. Sometimes, Brown said, Jones missed entire meetings, saying he or Kateryna weren’t feeling well.
Brown said he first learned of Kateryna when he heard that Newton Jones had met a woman overseas and then Jones started wearing a wedding band. He met Kateryna on a trip to Geneva, Switzerland, in 2013, he said, and her employment became an issue because she was “a foreign national of Ukraine.”
Newton Jones hired her, he said, to create handbills in Russian or Ukrainian languages for organizing campaigns outside shipyards in the Pacific Northwest — “nothing very extensive by any means,” Brown said.
Brown said Jones visited Kateryna in Ukraine several times on the union’s dime.
“There were multiple trips over there for weeks at a time,” he said, adding that Jones used no vacation time for the visits and did no significant work while there.
He said Kateryna moved to the U.S. in 2015. Newton Jones informed him of her arrival in an email that said, “The Ukrainian has landed.”
Jones soon called him about Kateryna’s salary, Brown said.
“He said, ‘Tyler, I think we still owe Kate for her back pay for the last two years.’”
Jones had set her salary at $60,000 a year, and Creedens’ office sent her a wire transfer for $120,000, Brown said.
Once Kateryna was in the U.S., Brown said, Newton Jones created a position for her: special assistant to the international president for executive and international affairs. When Falvo asked what her duties were, Brown said, “I’m not aware of anything.”
But she had business cards made with her title on them, he said, and was issued — and used — the union’s American Express card.
Newton Jones gave his wife several raises, Brown said. When he left the union in October 2022, he said, Kateryna was making about $120,000 a year.
Jones’ son, Cullen, was about 19 years old when Newton Jones hired him as a videographer in 2007, Brown said. His starting salary was about $60,000. Newton Jones laid Cullen off at one point, he said, then brought him back and then laid him off again.
Brown said Cullen Jones often didn’t show up for work and that the work he did was “not even close” to full-time.
Cullen Jones also had a union Amex card and was consistently months late turning in his expense receipts, Brown said. He said he told him that if he didn’t turn in the receipts, he would deduct the charges from Cullen’s banked vacation days.
Falvo wanted to know how Cullen Jones could have any banked vacation days when he seldom worked.
“He was the boss’s son,” Brown said.
Falvo said an annual report filed by the union with the Department of Labor showed Cullen Jones’ salary plus reimbursed expenses in fiscal year 2023 was $190,000.
Newton Jones hired his daughter, Shae, right out of college in 2019, Brown said, creating a graphic artist position for her. And he hired her boyfriend — now her husband — as an IT support employee for the Kansas City, Kansas, headquarters, Brown said, which was another new position. Newton Jones set their salaries at $50,000 each.
During the global pandemic in 2020, Brown said, Jones ordered across-the-board salary reductions for employees, but gave Shae and her boyfriend raises. In March 2021, he said, they both got raises to $75,000. And in September 2021, he said, Newton Jones increased Shae’s salary to $90,000 and her boyfriend’s to $140,000.
Bank of Labor salaries
The government also questioned Brown about the Bank of Labor, of which the union is a majority shareholder.
Newton Jones and Creeden were members of the bank’s board of directors, drawing a salary for those positions. Brown said the board met once a month for “a couple of hours.” Around 2011, the government alleges, Jones fired the bank’s CEO and took over the position, then appointed Creeden as a senior executive vice president. Both earned hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for those roles in addition to their director’s salaries.
Brown said he had no idea that the two were also bank employees until The Star published an investigation in 2012 revealing that fact. He said for the two to be union officers and bank employees at the same time was a violation of the union’s conflict of interest policy adopted by the International Executive Committee in 2009.
International trips and tours
Brown said that during his time with the union, there were more than 100 international trips taken at Jones’ direction. He went on more than 30 himself, he said.
Jones’ selected who would go, Brown said, and the trips sometimes included non-employee spouses. They flew business and first-class, he said, and “we stayed at some of the nicest five-star hotels you’d come across.”
On a trip to Italy in 2014, he said, the expenses per person were about $15,000. On that trip, he said, union members were gone for nine days and visited the Vatican and went on winery tours throughout the country.
Eight to 10 people went on a trip to London in February 2020 to discuss a possible merger with the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association, Brown said. The union employees stayed at a Hilton and were gone for at least 10 days, he said.
“We were definitely there for days after the meetings ended,” he said. The merger eventually fizzled, he said.
One conference, sponsored by a large global union, was in Perth, Australia, Brown said. Although the union took eight to 10 people on the weeklong trip, he said, all but him and two others stayed in Sidney and never made it to Perth.
And when a group of six or seven went to a meeting in Bremen, Germany, in 2017, Brown said, Jones and some others left at lunchtime and never returned.
He said those remaining were so embarrassed that they ended up putting their name tents away.
Also testifying on Tuesday was Amy Martin Wiser, the Boilermakers’ communications director and managing editor of The Boilermaker Reporter, the union’s quarterly publication.
Wiser said she went on some of the international trips, including one to a climate change meeting in Madrid, Spain, in 2019. Her hotel bill for the trip, she said, was $5,000.
A May 2022 trip to the Amalfi Coast in Italy, she said, included two group activities: a tour of the Pompeii ruins and an excursion to some Greek temples. She said Shae Jones and her boyfriend were among those on the trip.
Wiser said the side trips weren’t necessary.
“To some, did this seem like a luxury vacation?” prosecutor Jabari Wamble asked.
“Yes,” she said.
On cross-examination, Wiser said though she disagreed with the number of people Jones selected to attend, the conferences were important for union leaders to participate in and were “incredibly valuable” for networking. She said it would be irresponsible of Boilermakers not to be represented at some of the events.
Newton Jones’ attorney Dan Nelson asked Wiser if, prior to the indictment, the government ever said the Boilermakers were taking too many trips to conferences. Wiser said no.
And, Nelson asked, did anyone from the Department of Labor ever reach out and say the union was spending too much on hotels or sending too many people?
“Not to me,” she said.
