Freddy Escobar stood on the sidewalk outside his old workplace, waving a green thumb and a pile of papers which, according to him, would erase his name.
The suspended president of the united firefighters of Los Angeles City said that he could not enter the office where he has been working since 2018. He said that the parental organization of the union had changed the locks for the building and the door code to the parking lot.
He called the doorbell to deliver his evidence, including photos of receipts, to counter the allegations that he had not documented many of his credit card purchases. But there was no answer.
“Wow,” he said. As he turned to face new cameras, Escobar closed his eyes for a while. “An organization for which I would be dead does not give me the opportunity to present them now what they have sought.”
The dramatic scene took place Friday morning in front of the union’s office at Historic Filipinotown, four days after the International Assin. Firefighters suspended Escobar and two other union officers for financial irregularities, including “serious problems” with missing receipts.
The IAFF also placed the UFLAC in rigor, a first for one of the local firefighters supervised by the organization based in Washington, DC, said a spokesperson. The unprecedented move followed the reports of the Times on the IAFF financial audit as well as payments of massive overtime in Escobar and other union officials.
IAFF’s president of IAFF, Edward Kelly, revealed audit conclusions on Monday in a letter to UFLAC members.
From July 2018 to November 2024, ESCOBAR initiated 1,957 transactions on its UFLAC credit card, totaling $ 311,498, according to the letter. More than 70% of these transactions – amounting to $ 230,466 – had no support documentation.
“The listeners could not verify the objective of these transactions,” wrote Kelly in the letter. He added that 157 additional transactions – amounting to $ 35,397 – were only partially supported by the required documentation.
“This means that there is no way to determine whether $ 265,862.34 in money spent by President Escobar without documentation concerned legitimate union expenses,” said the letter.
The audit revealed that two other UFLAC officials – former secretary Adam Walker and former Treasurer Domingo Albarran Jr. – had more than $ 530,000 in credit card transactions without receipt or partial documentation. Walker did not respond to a request for comments and Albarran refused to comment.
A total of $ 800,000 in credit card purchases were not properly documented, according to the letter.
Vice-presidents Chuong Ho and Doug Coates were suspended and accused of having violated their fiduciary tasks “not asserting Uflac policy”. None of the two responded to a request for comments.
Escobar arrived at the Union’s office on Friday morning to speak to journalists at a press conference which he had called to refute the allegations. He said he was not aware that he was audited and was never invited to provide his receipts.
Under the UFLAC policy, receipts are required for all credit card expenses, as well as an explanation of expenses, including the names of the present people and the commercial reason for expenses.
Escobar said the files he held included all that IAFF had missed. But he also said that he did not count the totals and did not know how much money he represented. All the receipts he provided, he said, had already been downloaded in the union’s expenditure system.
“Whatever they say I don’t have, I did,” he said.
He said he compiled years of documentation, including more than 1,500 receipts, meeting minutes and explanations for his expenses, which included transactions for gas, food, hotels and Uber walks. He said that none was personal expenses.
When he was asked why he passed Uber walks when he had a take -out car provided by the union, he said that the rides were for members of the union.
The accounting problems had been reported earlier by UFLAC listeners, who, in March 2024, underlined the “important gaps” because the officers do not properly document their expenses.
Despite this warning, Escobar made 339 transactions in 2024 using his UFLAC credit card – for a total of $ 71,671 – without submitting a single receipt, Kelly wrote.
Escobar said the listeners never told him.
“What is a warning? It was an audit that said that we could always do better and that always happens-we could always do better,” he said.
Asked what could have been improved because he said he had all his receipts, he replied: “Probably more details. … Explanations, fine adjustment.”
He called the IAFF “doing the right thing” and restored it as president. In the meantime, he said that he would go back to work as a captain of the LAFD in a fire station in Boyle Heights.
On Friday, in a statement, IAFF spokesperson Ryan Heffernan said that since March 2024 and as recently as last month, Escobar was “exhorted on several occasions – in written communication and face -to -face meetings – to fulfill his fiduciary obligations towards the members of the local section 112 and to submit appropriate documentation for all expenses.”
“Despite this, the forensic audit, published in May 2025, confirmed serious shortcomings in the practices of reconciliation of the expenses and holding of files of Mr. Escobar between 2018-2024”, said the press release.
Last month, a Times survey revealed that Escobar and other Union high -level officers have had their pay checks with overtime for years while collecting union allowances of five to six figures.
ESCOBAR won about $ 540,000 in 2022, the most recent year for which recordings of its gains in town and union are available. He more than doubled his base salary of $ 184,034 with overtime payments that year, earning more than $ 424,500 from the city in terms of remuneration and services, according to pay data.
He collected an additional allowance of $ 115,962 of the Union, according to his latest federal tax file. He said he worked 48 hours per week in a union and related tasks, while the files provided by the city for this year show that he picked up an average of around 30 hours of extension per week on fire -fighting quarters – a total of around 78 hours of work per week.
Friday, he challenged his total income, saying: “It is much less than that”, although he did not provide proof.
California Daily Newspapers
