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With a January trial date looming, Dougherty’s codefendants appear to be scrambling to cut deals with prosecutors.
And in this game of musical chairs, come time for jury selection, the former union chief could end up standing alone.
Two more members of Dougherty’s union, the politically powerful Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, are expected to plead guilty to federal charges Wednesday.
Court hearings have been scheduled for Michael Neill, the longtime head of the union’s apprentice training program, and Dougherty’s nephew, Brian Fiocca, to admit their roles in an embezzlement scheme that prosecutors say drained $600,000 from union coffers between 2010 and 2016.
The proceedings follow similar hearings this week in which Local 98′s political director, Marita Crawford, and Dougherty’s onetime assistant, Niko Rodriguez, also entered guilty pleas.
That leaves only two defendants remaining as the Jan. 23 trial date approaches: union president Brian Burrows, and Dougherty, who has vowed to take the embezzlement case to trial despite a jury’s decision to convict him on bribery charges in another federal trial last year.
Dougherty’s attorneys, Caroline Goldner Cinquanto and Alan J. Tauber, said that so far the flurry of last-minute deal cutting hasn’t shaken the labor leader’s resolve.
“These pleas are a sad day for Local 98 and the union movement,” they said in a statement. “These are fine people who have worked tirelessly — and successfully — to create jobs for countless electricians and other working men and women in the Philadelphia effort.”
They added: “John Dougherty intends to continue fighting this case, just as he has fought for working families his entire life.”
Burrows’ lawyer, Thomas Bergstrom, said his client isn’t budging either — at least not yet. But added: “We’re never going to close our eyes or our minds to a resolution.”
A Local 98 spokesperson said Fiocca resigned from the union Tuesday, Neill intends to resign Thursday, and Local 98 had no influence over their decisions to plead guilty.
The details of the two newest pleas remain unclear. But it’s likely that — as with Crawford and Rodriguez before them — Neill, 56, and Fiocca, 31, won’t be required to cooperate with prosecutors or testify against Dougherty at trial.
Together, prosecutors have accused Dougherty and the others of treating Local 98′s membership dues like a personal slush fund from which they paid for everything from pricey meals and luxury hotel stays to home repairs and grocery purchases.
» READ MORE: Johnny Doc allegedly bought some pretty mundane stuff with IBEW Local 98′s credit cards
Neill, as the head of the apprentice training program, was one of two people whose signatures were required on all checks drawn from the program’s accounts.
But prosecutors say he routinely drew upon money meant to train the next generation of electricians to fund construction work at his South Philadelphia home and businesses he jointly owned with Dougherty and Burrows.
In 2010 alone, a union contractor, Anthony Massa, repaired a broken staircase at Neill’s house, performed termite remediation for Dougherty’s residence, and performed plumbing work on Doc’s Union Pub, the now shuttered Pennsport bar that was jointly owned by Dougherty, Burrows, and Neill.
All that work, according to the indictment, was done on the union’s dime.
» READ MORE: Johnny Doc indictment: Who's indicted and what are the charges?
Dougherty, Burrows, and Neill also owned a nearby commercial and residential building and allegedly billed thousands of dollars’ worth of contracting work Massa did there — from the installation of windows and skylights to spackling and plumbing repairs — to Local 98, too.
Several Dougherty family members also benefitted from that largesse — including his brother, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty who, according to the indictment, received home repairs and painting at his house in Bustleton paid for by Local 98′s general fund.
» READ MORE: For leader John Dougherty, union-paid generosity began at home
The fund also paid for work at the homes of John Dougherty’s daughter — Erin, head of a Local 98-backed charter school in Center City — and sister, Maureen Fiocca, who for years lived next door to her brother.
In total, the personal construction work prosecutors say Dougherty, Burrows and Neill billed to Local 98 between 2010 and 2016 topped $390,000.
An attorney for Kevin Dougherty has said the justice did not knowingly accept any benefit offered by his brother, as outlined in the government’s indictment, and prosecutors have not accused him of any wrongdoing.
Erin Dougherty and Maureen Fiocca have declined to comment. Neill’s attorney, Joseph P. Capone, did not return requests for comment Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Massa pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy, theft, and embezzlement of labor union assets in 2020 and is scheduled for sentencing in May.
Brian Fiocca — Maureen Fiocca’s son and Dougherty’s nephew — factors into another aspect of the case.
Prosecutors say Dougherty routinely relied on him and two other young Local 98 employees, whom he collectively referred to as “the kids” to run personal errands for him while they were on the clock for the union.
Between 2014 and 2015, Brian Fiocca, at Dougherty’s direction, rang up more than $5,000 in bills for groceries, clothing, furniture, and home decor at stores like Target and Lowe’s Home Improvement, the indictment against them says.
Those goods — almost all of which were delivered to the homes of Dougherty or Maureen Fiocca — were paid for using Local 98 credit cards and often falsely reported later on union ledgers as expenses for office supplies or meetings.
In only one instance did Brian Fiocca pay the union back, according to investigators: for the purchase of a $470 washing machine in 2015 that was delivered to his mother’s house, paid for with Dougherty’s union credit card and explained on union expense reports as a “small refrigerator for [a Local 98] office in NE Phila.”
Two years later, Fiocca cut a reimbursement check to Dougherty, who passed it onto the union.
It came only after, prosecutors say, the FBI’s interest in Local 98′s finances had come to light.
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Two more Johnny Doc codefendants plead guilty in union embezzlement case - The Philadelphia Inquirer
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