A federal jury in Greenbelt, Maryland, convicted former American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Local 2419 president Kimberly Goodwin, 54, of Bowie, Maryland, of participating in a wire fraud conspiracy and eight counts of money laundering.
AFGE is the largest federal employee union, representing 820,000 workers in the federal government and the District of Columbia.
“Kimberly Goodwin was a union leader entrusted to safeguard finances and represent the interests of dues-paying members, but instead led a scheme to steal from them and convert the money for personal use. This was a substantial betrayal of the trust of hard-working Americans,” said assistant attorney general A. Tysen Duva of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
“Kimberly Goodwin abused her position of trust as a union president to steal nearly $1 million from the very members she was elected to represent, funnelling their money to a sham consulting company for services that were never rendered,” said inspector general Anthony D’Esposito of the U.S. Department of Labour Office of Inspector General. “This conviction, along with the earlier conviction of her co-conspirator, sends a clear message that those who exploit their fiduciary responsibility to union members for personal enrichment will be held accountable.”
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Ms Goodwin served as president of AFGE Local 2419 from January 2017 to August 2019. During her service, the union represented about 500 federal employees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
As part of the fraud scheme, under Ms Goodwin’s authority, the union transferred approximately $1 million received from NIH from multiple employee grievance lawsuits into the Local 2419 bank account.
She then used her power as signatory on the union bank account—which she retained as part of her scheme to defraud the union even after her tenure as president expired in 2019—to transfer the money to a sham consulting company she owned.
Through a series of bank and wire transfers and cash withdrawals, she transferred approximately $1 million to her own account between 2019 and 2022 for services her consulting firm never provided, or for services whose invoiced value far exceeded the true value of the work.
As shown at trial, Ms Goodwin also secretly instituted new rules to the Local 2419 bylaws that allowed her sham consulting firm to receive illegitimate payment for claimed work on union issues such as training, contract negotiations and collective bargaining.
Evidence presented at trial showed that Local 2419 had not held a meeting since 2020 and that it ran out of money and went into receivership in 2022. Evidence also showed that, while she controlled the union’s bank account, Ms Goodwin spent union money for personal shopping, including a $7,400 massage chair and other personal expenditures.
Ms Goodwin is the second defendant convicted in this case. Ms Goodwin’s co-conspirator, the secretary-treasurer of AFGE Local 2419, Kelleigh Williams, was convicted in 2025 of wire fraud conspiracy for her part in the fraud scheme.
