Freddie Escobar was standing on the sidewalk outside his previous workplace waving a green thumb drive and stack of documents that said he would clear his name.
The suspended president of United Firefighters in Los Angeles City said he could not enter the office he had worked for since 2018. He said the union’s parent organization changed the lock to a building and the gate code to a parking lot.
He rang the doorbell and gave him evidence, including a photo of the receipt, countering allegations that he had not documented many of his credit card purchases. But there was no answer.
“Wow,” he said. He turned his face to the news camera and Escobar closed his eyes for a moment. “The organizations that I would have passed away don’t give me the opportunity to present them what they were looking for.”
The dramatic scene unfolded Friday morning outside the historic Philippine Town union office four days after the international ASSN. They have suspended firefighters and two other union officers over financial misconduct by firefighters.
The IAFF also placed the UFLAC under the Conservatorship. This is the first of the local firefighters’ union overseen by a DC-based organization, the spokesman said. The unprecedented move followed reports on the IAFAF’s financial audit and reports on massive overtime payments to Escobar and other union officials.
IAFF President Edward Kelly revealed the results of the audit in a letter to UFLAC members on Monday.
From July 2018 to November 2024, Escobar began trading 1,957 UFLAC credit cards, totaling $311,498, the letter said. More than 70% of these transactions ($230,466) had no support documents.
“The auditors were unable to confirm the purpose of these transactions,” Kelly wrote in the letter. He added that the additional 157 transactions (equivalent to $35,397) are only partially supported by the required documentation.
“This means there is no way to determine whether the dues are $265,862.34, the dues spent by President Escobar without a document,” the letter states.
The audit found that two other UFLAC staff members (former secretary Adam Walker and former treasurer Domingo Albalan Jr.) joined in and had no receipts or partial documents and had more than $530,000 on credit card transactions. Albalan declined to comment as Walker did not respond to a request for comment.
Overall, the purchase of around $800,000 in credit card purchases is not properly documented, the letter says.
Vice Presidents Truong Ho and Doug Coates were suspended and accused of violating their fiduciary duty to “fail to implement UFLAC policies.” Neither responded to requests for comment.
Escobar arrived at the Union office Friday morning and spoke with reporters at a press conference he called to rebuttal the allegations. He said he was not aware that he was being audited and was not asked to provide his receipt.
Under the UFLAC policy, a receipt is required for all credit card expenditures and a receipt is required with an explanation of the expenses, including the name that exists and business reasons for the expenditure.
Escobar said the records he had include everything that IAFF said he lost. However, he also said he didn’t tally the totals and didn’t know how much money he was occupying. All receipts he was providing have already been uploaded to the union’s cost system, he said.
“Whatever they say I don’t have, I have,” he said.
He said he has compiled a long-standing document that includes more than 1,500 receipts, meeting minutes and explanations of his expenses, including trades on gas, food, hotels and Uber vehicles. He said it wasn’t a personal expense.
When he had a takeaway car provided by the union, he was asked why he expelled an Uber ride, and he said the ride was a ride for members who were in the union business.
Accounting issues had previously been flagged by UFLAC auditors in March 2024, highlighting “significant flaws” due to executives’ failure to properly document their spending.
Despite that warning, Escobar made 339 transactions in 2024 using his UFLAC credit card (total of $71,671) without submitting a single receipt, Kelly writes.
Escobar said the auditors did not tell him.
“What is a warning? It was an audit that we said we could always do better and that would always happen — we can always do better,” he said.
He said he had all the receipts, so he asked what had improved, he replied: “Maybe more details….explanation, fine tuning.”
He called on the IAFF to “do the right thing” and resurrected him as president. In the meantime, he said he would return to work as LAFD captain at the Boyle Heights fire station.
In a statement Friday, IAFF spokesman Ryan Heffernan said, as in March 2024, Escobar was “repeated in writing communications and in-person meetings, asking them to fulfill their fiduciary duties to 112 local members and submit appropriate documentation for all expenditures.”
“Nottheless, a forensic audit issued in May 2025 identified significant flaws in Escobar’s cost adjustment and record-keeping practices between 2018-2024,” the statement said.
Last month, a Times survey found that Escobar and other top union officers have been padding their pay with overtime for many years, while also collecting five- to six-figure union scholarships.
Escobar made roughly $540,000 in 2022. This is a recent year where both his city and union income records are available. He more than doubled his base salary of $184,034 on overtime payments that year, and earned more than $424,500 from the city on salary and benefits, pay data shows.
He has raised an additional $115,962 scholarship from the union, according to his latest federal tax return. He reported working 48 hours a week in alliance-related duties, but records provided by the city that year earned an average of 30 hours of overtime per week on fire shifts.
On Friday, he challenged the total revenue, saying “it’s far less than that,” but did not provide evidence.
Source link
