Local 98′s ex-president secretly billed the union for $65,000 in repairs on his home, other properties, witness says

Brian Burrows, the former president of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, billed the union more than $65,000 for renovations done on his New Jersey home and other properties he owned, the contractor who oversaw that work told a federal jury Monday.

Anthony Massa, owner of Philadelphia-based Massa Construction, testified that for years he hid the cost of those jobs by padding bills he submitted to Local 98 for work he was simultaneously overseeing on union-owned buildings.

“And who told you to bill it that way?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell asked.

“Brian Burrows,” Massa replied.

That testimony kicked off the second week of the federal embezzlement trial of Burrows and Local 98′s former business manager and longtime leader, John J. Dougherty, who are accused, along with other union officials, of embezzling more than $600,000 from the union.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Only Dougherty codefendant who agreed to testify against him takes the stand in embezzlement trial

And while last week prosecutors focused on how both men allegedly used Local 98 credit cards to ring up tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of personal purchases, Massa’s testimony shifted the spotlight to yet another way the authorities contend Burrows and Dougherty illegally drained union coffers.

Government lawyers say that between 2010 and 2016 the ex-union leaders directed Massa to bill Local 98 for well over $100,000 worth of repair work to their homes and those of Dougherty’s relatives.

The union contractor, who pleaded guilty to his role in that fraud in 2020, is the only one of Dougherty’s and Burrows’ five codefendants in the case who has since agreed to testify against them.

But lawyers for Dougherty and Burrows have sought to discredit him as “a liar and a fraudster” who agreed to testify to whatever prosecutors wanted to hear in exchange for leniency in his case.

“When he got caught, he had to point the finger at someone else to save himself,” Burrows’ attorney Mark A. Kasten said in his opening statement to the jury last week.

But after being escorted into the courtroom Monday in a wheelchair pushed by an FBI agent, the raspy-voiced, 69-year-old general contractor was confident and resolute as he walked jurors through the $1.8 million Local 98 paid him for work during the period in question.

» READ MORE: Philly contractor pleads guilty to taking union money for work done on houses of John Dougherty and other Local 98 leaders

Some of that billing was legitimate, Massa said, including for a job his company carried out on the roof of Local 98′s Spring Garden headquarters in 2010.

As for the rest? He told jurors Burrows instructed him to inflate his fee for the roof job to also cover most of the cost of a $30,000-plus remodel Massa was overseeing at the same time at Burrows’ Mount Laurel home.

“We gutted the complete bathroom, pretty much,” Massa testified. “Took out the vanities, the shower, the floor — made room for new plumbing [and] electric.”

Massa also told jurors that in that same period he carried out $7,600-worth of repairs to the plumbing, bathroom, and roof at Doc’s Union Pub — a Pennsport bar he co-owned with Michael Neill, the former head of Local 98′s apprentice training program in a property Dougherty once owned.

Burrows and Neill also hired him, the contractor testified, to oversee more than $10,000 in skylight and window installations, spackling and plumbing work and other repairs at a building they owned on the 1800 block of South Second Street between 2010 and 2013.

Grenell asked again and again who footed the bill for all of those jobs.

Each time, Massa offered the same answer: Local 98.

His testimony is expected to continue Tuesday as prosecutors focus on work he did for Dougherty on his home and those of his family members.

That tab included $550 in groceries and diapers from Target purchased by one of Dougherty’s nephews and billed to the union as “campaign office supplies” and a $470 washing machine bought by another nephew in 2015 and delivered to the Pennsport home of Dougherty’s sister, Maureen Fiocca. The ex-union chief expensed the appliance as a “small refrigerator for office in [northeast] phila.”

» READ MORE: Johnny Doc is accused of spending thousands on his friends and family with Local 98 money. Here’s what prosecutors say he bought.

But defense attorney Greg Pagano questioned both of those charges, noting that neither directly involved Dougherty and maintaining that both were made by the ex-union chief’s nephews without his knowledge.

Nonetheless, Pagano said, Dougherty reimbursed the union for the $470 cost of the washing machine in 2018 — two years after the FBI raided his home and office, revealing that agents were investigating him for misusing union funds.

He later cut Local 98 a check to reimburse the union for another $15,000 in personal expenses, Pagano said.

But IRS Special Agent Laura Capra quickly cut him off. That $15,000, she said, went to cover personal charges Dougherty billed that were above and beyond the nearly $70,000 around which prosecutors built their case.