Limestone Man Sentenced for Making False Statements

A Limestone man was sentenced to one month in prison and three years of supervised release for making false statements and entries in annual reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Mark Durinski, 64, was also ordered to pay $53,544.98 in restitution to the Local from which he stole money as well as $300.00 in special assessments.  Durinski pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to three felony counts of making the false statements on September 14, 2015 and subsequently paid $20,000 in restitution.

Court records reveal that Durinski was employed by the Defense Finance Accounting Service (“DFAS”) and was also a founding member and the president of the local American Federation of Government Employees (“AFGE”) union that represented DFAS employees in Limestone.

In his capacity as local AFGE president, he signed and certified as true annual Labor Department reports that failed to disclose that he received over $50,000 from the local to reimburse him for travel and other expenditures for which he was also reimbursed by U.S. Department of Defense or another source.  In imposing the prison sentence, Judge Woodcock stated it was:

striking that [the defendant] would cheat the very organization that he had founded and take money from employees who trusted him.”

The investigation was conducted by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Labor-Management Standards.