The document filed by prosecutors also provided more details about the wage fraud allegations. Conover and Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Huie wrote that each year from 2004 to 2010, Bonner put in lost wage compensation claims for every Sunday, every federal holiday, most nights, 14.5 hours of overtime for each pay period and payment for annual leave.
Former union chief T.J. Bonner has pleaded not guilty.
Federal prosecutors say the former head of the labor union for U.S. Border Patrol agents was defrauding the union with bogus wage and travel claims for close to two decades.
The allegation is the latest in the case against T.J. Bonner, who led the National Border Patrol Council from 1993 until retiring in 2010.
Bonner, a longtime Campo resident, was indicted last year in San Diego federal court on conspiracy and wire fraud charges. Prosecutors said that he billed personal expenses for wages, travel, meals, tickets to sporting events and other items to the union.
His reimbursement claims said he had incurred the expenses while working on union business. The government said he was not working for the union, and in many instances was actually visiting a mistress outside of Chicago.
Prosecutors filed their response this month to legal motions filed by Bonner’s lawyer to dismiss the case. While the indictment covers from 2004 to 2010, prosecutors said in the new filing that Bonner’s fraud began more than a decade before that.
The union policies on being paid for “lost wages” were put in place in 1993, just after Bonner took over as union president, the filing says. The time frame for the investigation was expanded after a search in March 2012 of Bonner’s home, which yielded a huge amount of data stored in files, computers and hard drives.
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