A former ILWU Local 142 elected official admitted Thursday that he cashed his dead father’s Social Security benefit checks and failed to pay his federal income taxes.
Nathan Yuen Grit “Nate” Lum, 61, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to one count of aggravated identity theft and failing to file his income tax return for 2012. He faces a mandatory two-year prison term for the identity theft and up to an additional year in custody for the tax return charge at his sentencing hearing, which has been scheduled for July.
A federal grand jury in June returned an indictment charging Lum with theft of public money, two counts
of aggravated identity theft and failing to file his tax
returns between 2011 and 2015. The indictment also seeks the forfeiture of any money or proceeds traceable to the crimes.
For its part of the deal, federal prosecutors promised to drop the theft charge, the second aggravated identity theft count and the tax return charges for 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Prosecutors also promised not to seek the forfeiture of any property.
Lum has agreed to pay the IRS $77,934 in back taxes and to repay the Social Security Administration $33,435.
The ILWU reported that
it paid Lum an average of more than $200,000 per year between 2011 and 2015 in
total compensation, with
a high of $236,987 in 2013. Lum’s union compensation for 2012 was $231,931.
Lum in 2015 lost his bid for re-election to longshore division director but continues to work as a supervisor for a stevedore company.
He was represented by the office of the Federal Public Defender.
He told U.S. District Judge Derrick K. Watson that his father’s monthly Social Security benefits went directly into his father’s checking
account. Lum said before his father died, he had him sign a stack of blank checks. After his father died, Lum said he filled in the blank checks, making himself the payee, and deposited the checks into his own account.
Lum’s father, Harris Y.S. Lum, died June 14, 2013. He was 89.
Lum’s legal troubles could continue. When Watson asked him whether the plea agreement contained all the promises made to him by the government, Lum said, “As far as this case.”
Local 142’s former executive secretary is suing the union, Lum and other union officials in state court. Lynette L. Martin claimed that she was fired for cooperating in a federal investigation of Lum’s wage claims and his use of the union’s credit card. She said investigators approached her in August 2016; she turned over union documents they subpoenaed in October 2016 and testified before a federal grand jury in November 2016.