Ex-union chief: He took funds for wining, dining and dancing
Star Ledger
May 4, 2005
GUY STERLING
David Feeback spent money like there was no tomorrow -- elaborate
meals, expensive liquor, dancing girls.
Trouble was, the $120,000 and maybe as much as $250,000 he
rang up at cash registers in some of the area's fancier eating
and entertainment establishments between 1999 and 2001 belonged
to Local 4-69 of the Hotel Employees & Restaurant Employees
International Union in Secaucus, federal prosecutors said.
In more than one instance, Feeback, the local's president
in those years, spent thousands of dollars in union operating
and welfare funds on a single night out, mostly at Greek restaurants
featuring belly dancing, authorities said.
There was the almost $16,000 he dropped at Molfetas in South
Hackensack over Sept. 24-26 in 1999; another $8,700 at the
Grecian Cave in Astoria, Queens, on Sept. 9, 2001; and $14,000
at Estia's on Manhattan's Upper East Side on Aug. 30, 1999.
Included in the spending sprees was $275 on bottles of wine,
said Assistant U.S. Attorney Grady O'Malley. Feeback also
was known to buy cases of champagne or drinks for the house,
the prosecutor added.
Feeback was such a good patron that the owner of one belly
dancing club had stacks of bills still in their wrappers hand-delivered
to his table so that he and his friends could open them up
and use them to show the dancers their appreciation, with
the money billed to credit cards, O'Malley said.
Prosecutors also maintained Feeback almost always got a front-row-center
table for himself and his entourage to take in the action.
"It was all part of being Mr. Bigshot," said O'Malley.
Indicted in August on two counts of embezzling, Feeback admitted
to a federal judge in Newark yesterday that he did, indeed,
pony up that kind of money to satisfy his expensive tastes.
He also pleaded guilty to one count related to theft of union
funds and another for theft from a union welfare fund.
"You knew that spending this money, in the manner you
did, was unauthorized by the union and the welfare fund?"
O'Malley asked Feeback, as the defendant provided U.S. District
Judge William Martini with a factual basis for his plea.
"Yes, I did," Feeback replied.
Feeback, 43, a resident of North Carolina who said he is currently
working as a restaurant manager, faces a maximum sentence
of 10 years in prison and fines and restitution in the hundreds
of thousands of dollars when he is sentenced in August. He
remains free on bail.
After the proceeding, Feeback's lawyer, Paul Brickfield, said
his client would not make the same mistake today.
"He was much younger then and had just become the (local's)
president," Brickfield said of Feeback. "It was
a different time. It was pre-9/11, and there was money floating
around. He made an error and acknowledges it."
The defense lawyer also said he and prosecutors disputed many
of the facts of the case, particularly when it came to whether
Feeback's spending was part of a union function.
"He (Feeback) pleaded guilty to excessive expenditures
as opposed to spending with no union purpose," Brickfield
added.
Feeback worked his way up to union president from serving
as maitre d' of the Pegasus restaurant at the Meadowlands
Racetrack, O'Malley said. Half of the local's roughly 3,000
members are concession workers, food and beverage servers,
restaurant workers and cooks at the Meadowlands Sports Complex
in East Rutherford.
O'Malley said Feeback was brought into the local as business
agent in the summer of 1997 by a previous president and alleged
mob associate, John N. Agathos, who was expelled from the
union.
It was not uncommon for Feeback to stop by four or five places
in one night before settling in at one of the late-night belly
dancing clubs, authorities said. Tavern on the Green, Windows
on the World, the St. Regis Hotel, China Grill, Russian Tea
Room and The Firebird were among his early evening favorite
haunts, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Judith Germano.
The $14,000 party at Estia's was supposed to be for union
members, but investigators were never able to find any who
attended, O'Malley said.
They also were unable to break down Feeback's lavish spending
more specifically because the bills that showed up on bank
and credit card statements were totals that just as easily
could have been interpreted as a legitimate business expenses,
O'Malley added.
A suit the U.S. Department of Labor has filed against the
local's health plan that includes Feeback as a defendant remains
ongoing, authorities said. In that case, in which Feeback
is charged as a trustee, the federal government says more
than $2 million was misspent as "excessive and unreasonable
compensation" for services to the health fund.
