ONE IS A FORMER CANDIDATE FOR HOUSE
Early Wednesday, a report was filed with the Anchorage Police Department stating that two men entered a midtown job site and presented themselves as Department of Labor employees who were there to do an inspection involving wage and hours.
The job site was the commercial building that houses the Anchorage Legislative Information Office, at 1500 Benson Blvd.
The company doing the work on the building was Bauer Construction. Bauer Construction filed the report at 7:50 am Wednesday.
The two imposters? They were identified in the report as Chris Dimond and Dustin Swatek, both organizers with the Pacific Northwest Regional Council of Carpenters.
According to the police report, Dimond and Swatek entered the job site and identified themselves to the superintendent as officials from the Department of Labor.
While touring the site, they managed to pull private information from one of the employees, including his name, phone number, job title, and the wage he was being paid.
The company superintendent had his doubts, however. The two didn’t act like state Department of Labor employees. One of them had a hardhat with a Neeser Construction sticker on it. Swatek is a former carpenter with Neeser.
When pressed, Swatek admitted that he worked for the union, but said that Dimond worked for the Department of Labor.
The men were asked for further identification; Swatek provided a business card right before he left the parking lot in his vehicle that had no State of Alaska identification. Dimond walked off the premises.
Dimond was a candidate for office in Juneau in 2018, when he ran for the House seat for downtown Juneau that was vacated by former Rep. Sam Kito III. Dimond ran as an undeclared candidate and lost to Democrat Rep. Sara Hannan.
Alaska Statute 11.56.830 says it’s a criminal offense if a “person commits the crime of impersonating a public servant if the person pretends to be a public servant and does any act in that capacity.” It’s a second degree, Class B misdemeanor.
