Ex-union leader pleads guilty to embezzlement

Tuesday, July 27, 1999 | 10:16 a.m.

Former Clark County Education Association Executive Director Steve Confer pleaded guilty Monday in Fort Wayne, Ind., to embezzling funds from an Indiana teacher's union over a two-year period.

He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 20, David Miller, assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Indiana, said.

The maximum sentence, Miller said, would be five years but because Confer has made restitution it is possible the one-time union executive will be placed on probation or given house arrest.

"In the big picture, this was not that big a deal," Miller said.

He said Confer was serving as treasurer for the Professional Service Organization, an employee group in the Indiana State Teachers Association, when between 1994 and 1996 he wrote a series of checks to himself totaling more than $53,000.

Confer was charged with 20 counts of embezzlement, but in an agreement with prosecutors pleaded guilty to only one -- writing a check for $1,850.

The Clark County Classroom Teachers Association hired Confer as its executive director in 1996. He resigned from that position in 1998, blaming media attention that focused on his problems in Indiana.