Former firefighter union treasurer charged with stealing funds

Former firefighter union treasurer charged with stealing funds

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SALT LAKE CITY — A former treasurer of the Salt Lake City Firefighter's Union is accused of stealing more than $133,000 of union funds for personal use in the form of forged checks and taking from other funding sources, including the Fill the Boot campaign.

Joshua Diamond, 39, of Mapleton, was charged Tuesday in 3rd District Court with communications fraud, a second-degree felony; theft by deception, a second-degree felony; unlawful dealing of property by a fiduciary, a second-degree felony; and two counts of forgery, a third-degree felony.

The investigation into Diamond began in 2016 when the union president discovered discrepancies between union accounts and checks that were written from those accounts, according to charging documents. He is listed in court documents as being a secretary/treasurer.

After requesting checks for the past three years, dating back to 2013, the president discovered that "Diamond had been writing checks to himself for fictitious reimbursements," the charges state.

Authorizing signatures required on the checks were forged, according to charging documents. Unauthorized debit and credit card charges were also discovered, court documents state, as well as some checks that didn't have a forged signature but the amounts the checks were written for were changed.

Between September 2012 and November 2014, at least 17 cashier's checks totaling $20,000 were forged, according to the charges. Between 2013 and 2015, Diamond committed multiple acts of forgery, communications fraud and theft, including forging 46 checks totaling more than $62,000, in addition to more than $21,000 in forged cashier's checks, as well as more than $27,000 in withdrawals from union savings, and "other unauthorized uses of union funds" totaling more than $15,000, the charges state.

An audit also revealed another union savings account was drained by cash withdrawals from Diamond, according to prosecutors.

"The audit also revealed that $4,000 in donations made through the Fill the Boot campaign in 2014 never made it to the proper account," investigators wrote in the charges.

Diamond later admitted to forging mileage reimbursement checks to himself, even though he wouldn't have needed them because he conducted most of his business while serving as an on-duty firefighter, the charges state. Diamond allegedly told investigators he had intended to pay the money back eventually.

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Pat Reavy

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