Johnny Doc’s nephew sentenced to probation in Local 98 union embezzlement scheme

READING — Comparing the nephew of former labor leader John Dougherty to prey “caught up in a spider web” spun by his uncle, a federal judge opted Monday to spare the younger man from a possible prison term for his role in a $600,000 embezzlement scheme for which both men have now been convicted.

Instead, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl sentenced Brian Fiocca — who worked as his uncle’s personal assistant and driver — to three years’ probation and ordered him to pay back the more than $10,000 he drained from the coffers of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union Dougherty led for nearly 30 years.

“At the time of these offenses, [Fiocca] was young and was working for his uncle,” the judge said Monday in explaining his decision. “The situation is more like him being caught up in a spider web spun by the spider.”

» READ MORE: John Dougherty union embezzlement case: Day-by-day updates

For his part, Fiocca, 32, apologized to Local 98′s members as he read a brief statement in court.

“From the time I was a child, Local 98 has meant everything to my family,” he said. “Realizing I let down the members — the people who make it tick — is devastating to me.”

With that sentence Monday, Fiocca became the fourth Dougherty codefendant to face punishment in a case that prompted the ex-labor leader’s ouster and a complete shake-up of its leadership.

Last month, Schmehl sentenced Local 98′s former head of apprentice training, Michael Neill, and its onetime political director, Marita Crawford, to prison terms of 13 months and two weeks, respectively — for misspending thousands of dollars in union money between 2010 and 2019.

Another young Local 98 employee who worked as an assistant to Dougherty, Niko Rodriguez, was sentenced to three years’ probation on Feb. 22.

And while Dougherty, who faces his own sentencing in May, has not attended the sentencing hearings of his former allies — including his nephew’s on Monday — his shadow has loomed large over them all.

In Fiocca’s case, prosecutors had urged Schmehl to sentence him, like Crawford, to a short stint behind bars, saying they viewed him as more culpable than Rodriguez and deserving of a prison term.

But defense lawyer Elizabeth Toplin pushed back, insisting that Fiocca’s familial connection to Dougherty gave him even more reason than Rodriguez to follow Dougherty’s lead.

Fiocca, she said, viewed Dougherty as a surrogate parent after the death of his father, also a Local 98 electrician, in 2009.

He grew up in a house on East Moyamensing Avenue next door to Dougherty’s. His older brother was also a member of the union. And it seemed inevitable, Toplin added, that Fiocca would go to work for Local 98 after his graduation from Saints John Neumann and Maria Goretti Catholic High School.

“In our neighborhood, if you’re not a longshoreman, you’re a Local 98 member,” Fiocca’s mother, Maureen Fiocca, told Schmehl. “That is just what we grew up in and what my children grew up in.”

But despite earning an annual salary well north of $100,000 , Brian Fiocca spent his workdays mostly running errands for his uncle, prosecutors said.

Evidence presented at Dougherty’s trial last year showed that the former labor leader routinely instructed Fiocca to use Local 98 credit cards to buy groceries, takeout meals, gifts, and household goods for himself and members of their family.

In 2015, Fiocca bought his mother a $470 washing machine and charged it to Dougherty’s card. She later got a mattress out of the deal, too.

When he wasn’t shopping on union time, he was driving Dougherty family members including his grandfather — John Sr. — around or taking trips to New Jersey to check on the family’s Sshore homes.

And on top of the misspending personally authorized by his uncle, prosecutors said, Fiocca racked up thousands more on his own buying mundane items like breakfast cereal, mouthwash, and dog food all on the union’s dime.

“This was not a one-time mistake,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben said Monday. “He repeatedly over the course of more than a year stole from the union that employed him.”

She noted that shortly after Fiocca, Dougherty, and four other union officials and employees were charged in the embezzlement scheme in 2019, the union increased Fiocca’s salary to roughly $140,000 a year.

But since Fiocca’s guilty plea in 2022 and resignation of his union post, his financial outlook has grown significantly dimmer, Toplin, the defense lawyer said.

He hasn’t held a full-time job since, instead pursuing part-time work as a roofer, and hopes to start an apprenticeship with the operating engineers’ union later this month.

Still, Schmehl, the judge, concluded Monday that Fiocca had the ability to pay a $5,000 fine on top of the more than $10,000 in restitution he now owes Local 98. As part of his term of probation, the judge also ordered Fiocca to complete 40 hours of community service.

As Fiocca departed the courtroom Monday with his wife, mother, and sister by his side, Schmehl paused to wish him luck.

“Mr. Fiocca,” he said from the bench, “I hope you never see the inside of a courtroom again.”