Dave Beck - Senate Investigation and Retirement

Senate Investigation and Retirement

In 1957, Beck was called to testify before the United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management. Harshly interrogated by committee counsel Robert F. Kennedy about $322,000 missing from the union treasury, Beck invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 117 times. Beck declined to seek the presidency in 1957, and was succeeded by Jimmy Hoffa.

Beck was prosecuted for embezzlement and labor racketeering in 1959 in Washington state. He was convicted for pocketing $1,900 from the sale of a union-owned Cadillac. Beck was convicted later that year on federal charges of income-tax evasion. He appealed his convictions, and his sentence was reduced to three years. He entered prison in 1962. His wife, Dorothy, died while he was serving his sentence. Beck, a former member of the Washington State Board of Prison Terms and Paroles, was himself paroled in 1965 after serving 30 months at McNeil Island Penitentiary. He was pardoned by Washington state Governor Albert Rosellini in 1965, and by President Gerald Ford in 1975.

After his release from prison, Beck lived in a basement in a house he himself had built for his mother and sister in the 1940s. He retained his $50,000-a-year Teamster president's pension and became a multimillionaire investing in parking lots.

Dave Beck died at the age of 99 in Northwest Hospital in Seattle on December 26, 1993.