A federal jury today handed down guilty verdicts against three former Teamsters accused of rigging a local union election.

The federal jury found former Local 743 comptroller Thaddeus Bania and former recording secretary Richard Lopez guilty on all counts of conspiracy, mail fraud and stealing union property. Fellow Teamster David Rodriguez was guilty on two counts of mail fraud and three counts of theft.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed. We thought we had some arguments," says Bania attorney George Becker.

Attorneys for Lopez and Rodriguez did not immediately return requests for comment.

Federal officials hailed the decision against the Teamsters, who they said "deprived Local 743 of their honest services."

“Fair and honest officer elections are the cornerstone of our democratic union movement,” Andrew Auerbach, deputy director of the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, said in a statement.  “Today’s verdict demonstrates the Department of Labor’s commitment to enforce the right of union members to open and fair elections.”

The trial weaved bucket loads of evidence with intrigue between the defendants and former union president Robert Walston, who struck a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney's Office for a softer sentence based on his cooperation with the government.

Becker says Walston's testimony, which fingered Bania as his co-conspirator in the election rigging, secured the verdicts.

"I couldn't believe a word Bob Walston said. I guess the jury did believe him," Becker says. "I don't know how else the jury convicted those men but for the words of Bob Walston."

During a disoriented and stumbling performance on the stand, Walston recounted how he and Bania meticulously marked ballots in his kitchen, wearing latex gloves to eliminate any chance of leaving finger prints and sealing envelopes with moistened paper towels and sponges.

He did not, however, place Bania's co-defendants near the manipulated ballots.

But prosecutors presented evidence that Rodriguez's fingerprints had ended up on some of the completed ballots. Rodriguez's attorney, Robert Habib, had no ready explanation for that.

"There are six billion of us on this earth, supposedly with different prints," Habib told the jury. "One has a right to be skeptical."

Walston's testimony was a crucial part of the government's case, but other prosecution witnesses also cast doubt on the men's innocence in the 2004 election scheme.

Department of Labor investigator Steve Bubolka described how he combed through subpoenaed records to identify more than a hundred addresses of Teamster voters that were changed on a single day.

Prosecutors argued the defendants schemed to change the addresses so they could direct ballots to their allies.

Sentencing is on Aug. 27.

Becker says it's too early to know whether he will appeal the case, but that he agreed with a judge's assessment that the jury was attentive throughout the trial.

"I can't quibble with that," he says.

The defendants face up to 20 years in prison for each count of mail fraud and up to five years for each count of conspiracy and theft.