JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — With a trial looming, former Duval Teachers United Executive Vice President Ruby George pleaded guilty Aug. 4 to federal fraud charges surrounding $1.2 million in sales of leave time.

The plea leaves former DTU President Terrie Brady, a longtime figure in labor and Democratic Party circles, preparing to face a jury alone.

Teams for both the prosecution and defense asked Aug.1 to delay that trial from September to November, however.

George and Brady, who jointly led the 6,500-member union for 24 years and were its top-ranking employees, were indicted together in December 2024 on charges that they both sold back to DTU big blocks of vacation time they hadn’t earned.

George, 82, pleaded to three of the seven counts that mention her by name, admitting roles in conspiracy, wire fraud and mail fraud, crimes that each carry maximum penalties of 20 years in prison.

Seated in a wheelchair, George leaned her head upon her hands before the court convened, but during the hearing answered U.S. Magistrate Judge Samuel Horovitz’s questions in clear, calm tones.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” asked Horovitz, who received a matter-of-fact “yes” in reply.

A part of the plea agreement reciting a “factual basis” for the charges said the women both began selling leave to the union in the 2000s, describing sales of leave balances that would have been nearly impossible to accrue.

The union allotted its employees ― not the teachers, paraprofessionals and others who are DTU members ― 42 days of leave per year that they could use or keep to grow balances of available time off year over year.

But the agreement said George sold more leave than she’d ever earned, giving as one example sales in 2013 of 2,872 hours of leave, the equivalent of 359 days of time off.

The agreement said George and Brady signed each other’s checks (part of the conspiracy) to authorize the payments into bank accounts (the wire fraud) and didn’t circulate information about their leave balances to the union’s governing board, made up of volunteers who usually met monthly.

The board did hire an auditor in 2017 to review union finances, the agreement said, but there was an effort to mislead the auditor about leave data and no time was ever allotted for the auditor to report findings to the board.

DTU had to send yearly financial reports with Florida’s Public Employees Relations Commission, but the reports were doctored (the mail fraud) to hide information that could have derailed the leave scam, the report said.

George could be sentenced as early as about 75 days from now, Horowitz told her.

George’s plea included language about the potential for offering “substantial assistance” to authorities, but it’s not clear whether that will include testifying at Brady’s trial.

This report was first published by the Florida Times-Union.