At Johnny Doc trial, prosecutors seek to bolster cooperator’s testimony as defense lawyers cast doubt

As a key witness in the government’s case against former labor leader John Dougherty wrapped up his testimony, prosecutors zipped through a steady stream of witnesses Wednesday aimed at supporting his story.

Contractor Anthony Massa — the only one of Dougherty’s codefendants who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against him — told jurors over three days on the witness stand this week that he provided free home repairs to Dougherty and his relatives worth tens of thousands of dollars.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Home repairs paid by union are focus of John Dougherty trial testimony; lawyer for Kevin Dougherty fires back

He’d sent the bills, he said, to Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union Dougherty led for nearly 30 years.

“Who was the one who told you to do that?” asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell as he closed out questioning of the contractor Wednesday, the eighth day of Dougherty’s trial on charges he embezzled union funds.

“Mr. Burrows,” Massa responded, referring to Brian Burrows, the union’s former president and Dougherty’s codefendant.

But as soon as Massa left the courtroom Wednesday morning, prosecutors clambered to beat back defense efforts to paint the contractor as a liar.

In quick succession, they elicited testimony from one of his former contractors and two Local 98 employees — each of whom confirmed aspects of Massa’s account.

Michelle Procopio — a former secretary for the union’s apprentice training program — told jurors that she, too, had received free home renovations from Massa.

In 2010, she said, she hired the contractor to turn a bedroom in her Philadelphia rowhouse into a walk-in closet after she was introduced to him by her then-boss Michael Neill.

But when it came time to pay for the work, she said, Massa never sent her a bill.

She later asked Neill how much she owed, she said, and recalled him telling her: “Don’t worry about it. We’ve got it.”

Prosecutors say the union ended up covering the cost of that work.

As Massa explained it to jurors this week, he routinely hid the cost of side jobs, such as the work on Procopio’s home, in fees he charged Local 98 for work he was simultaneously doing on union-owned buildings.

Burrows, he said, had instructed him on how to carry out this fraudulent billing for jobs at his home, Dougherty’s, and those of Dougherty’s relatives.

Prosecutors contend that Neill was also aware of that arrangement — a fact to which the ex-union official admitted when he pleaded guilty to his own role in the scheme last year.

» READ MORE: The guilty pleas keep coming in Johnny Doc’s embezzlement case as two more Local 98 members cut deals

The steep fees Massa was charging the union caught the attention of at least one Local 98 employee.

Dawn McCarry, a Local 98 bookkeeper who processed the bills the contractor would send to the union, testified Wednesday that she thought Massa’s bills seemed high.

“I thought they were expensive,” she told the jury. “But I’m cheap.”

McCarry later said she spoke with Massa after he, Dougherty, Burrows, and Neill were indicted in 2019 for misusing Local 98 money.

As she recalled it: “He just said he was only doing what he was told.”

And though the defense sought to cast doubt on those pricey bills — accusing Massa of inflating labor and the cost of materials for the work he did on the homes of union officials and their relatives — one of the contractor’s former employees, Mike Castagna, backed up his ex-boss’ pricing during his brief testimony Wednesday.

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

Castagna told jurors that during his 12 years at Massa Construction, he’d worked on many of the jobs now at issue in the case — the work done at Procopio’s rowhouse, a more than $30,000 remodeling of Burrows’ bathroom in 2010, and various jobs at the homes of Dougherty; his father, John Sr.; his daughter, Erin; his sister, Maureen Fiocca; and his brother, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty over the years.

Massa, Castagna said, was a “stickler” who kept copious notes tracking what employees did each day, how long each task took, and how much to charge for their work.

Throughout Massa’s testimony, prosecutors relied on those scribblings — kept in what Castagna referred to as “Tony’s binder of madness” — to show precisely how Massa was hiding his fees for work on private homes in the bills he sent to Local 98.

But some things still escaped the contractor’s assiduous record keeping.

Before Massa left the witness stand Wednesday, lawyers for John Dougherty and Burrows grilled him on his earlier claim that Local 98 — not Dougherty’s relatives — paid him for work he’d performed at their homes.

But Dougherty’s lawyer Greg Pagano pointed to a $448 check from Erin Dougherty to Massa — payment, the defense lawyer contended, for repair work he completed on her house in 2014. (Prosecutors maintain the true cost of that work was worth more than $1,500.)

» READ MORE: ‘You are still a liar’: Defense attacks key government witness in John Dougherty’s embezzlement trial

Massa acknowledged he’d also forgotten that Kevin Dougherty had eventually paid him for painting and drywall work he oversaw at the justice’s house in 2011.

But that check, the contractor said, didn’t come until five years after the work was complete — and after a series of 2016 FBI raids that revealed agents were investigating John Dougherty’s use of union money.

Kevin Dougherty has declined to comment on his brother’s case and the allegations that he received union-paid home repairs from Massa.

But as prosecutors’ efforts to buttress the contractor’s testimony continued in court Wednesday, lawyers for the Supreme Court justice worked outside the courtroom to cast doubt.

» READ MORE: Pa. Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty received free home repairs paid for by brother’s union, witness says at trial

“Tony Massa’s testimony is inconsistent and not worthy of belief,” Kevin Dougherty’s lawyer, Courtney Saleski, said in a statement sent to The Inquirer within hours of the contractor leaving the witness stand. “One day Judge Dougherty allegedly failed to pay …. the next day he states Justice Dougherty paid for the work five years later.”

She continued: “The only consistency in [Massa’s] testimony is the spewing of falsehoods attempting to tarnish others.”