From the Eagles to Taylor Swift, Local 98′s spending on sports and concert tickets draws scrutiny at Johnny Doc’s trial
The union spent roughly $2.6 million in tickets to sporting events and concerts over three years. Prosecutors say Dougherty's friends and family had their pick.
From the Philadelphia Eagles to Taylor Swift, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers spent roughly $2.6 million between 2014 and 2016 on some of the hottest sports and concert tickets in town, federal prosecutors said Monday.
But when it came to who got to use them, one man made all the decisions:
“John Dougherty,” his former assistant told jurors as the embezzlement trial of the union’s longtime leader entered its fourth week on Monday.
Lindsey Lazer — who delivered her testimony dressed in a kelly green sweater with the word “BIRDS” embroidered across her chest — said she fielded calls on a near daily basis from union members; politicians, including Mayor Jim Kenney; and others seeking passes to the luxury suites Local 98 maintained at Lincoln Financial Field, Citizens Bank Park, and the Wells Fargo Center for various events.
As Dougherty’s assistant, she said, she’d always check with him on who ought to receive them.
“Did anyone else have the authority to distribute the tickets that Local 98 purchased?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben asked.
Lazer responded: “No.”
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That testimony came as prosecutors began to wind down their case against Dougherty by focusing on one of the few aspects of their 78-count indictment against the union chief that remains unaddressed.
While they concede that the vast majority of that $2.6 million in tickets and concessions went to union members or business and political leaders with whom Local 98 was seeking to curry favor, they’ve alleged that Dougherty misspent thousands in union funds by also buying sports and concert tickets for family and friends.
Local 98 kept no records of who received any of the tickets it bought over the years, an FBI agent told jurors Monday. And in some cases, prosecutors said, Dougherty’s union-paid generosity toward his family members went beyond what they asked.
“I’ve got Nicki Minaj tonight,” he told his niece, Maureen T. Fiocca, in a 2015 phone call caught on an FBI wiretap and played in court Monday. “How many do you need?”
Fiocca asked for two tickets. Dougherty replied: “I got four.”
Fiocca, who worked part-time for Local 98 while attending college, also snagged union luxury suite tickets the next year for a Rihanna concert the following year and eight tickets to a Justin Bieber tour stop at a cost of nearly $1,200.
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Prosecutors have also alleged that Dougherty directed six tickets to a 2016 Bruce Springsteen concert to a car dealer who was assisting him in leasing a vehicle for his father.
And when Swift’s tour rolled through Lincoln Financial Field for two nights in 2015, four tickets went to the young daughter of a friend of Local 98 political director Marita Crawford, with whom Dougherty has acknowledged he was having an affair.
The girl texted Dougherty to thank him: “I love Taylor Swift.”
This isn’t the first time Local 98′s prolific purchasing of concert and sports tickets has become a focus of a federal corruption case.
When a jury convicted former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon on bribery charges in 2021, more than $20,000 worth of tickets to Eagles, Phillies, and NCAA basketball games were among the payoffs with which the panel found that Dougherty bribed the elected official.
In their unsuccessful bid to convict Henon’s Council colleague Kenyatta Johnson on unrelated corruption charges last year, prosecutors sought to introduce evidence that he, too, accepted Local 98 tickets and failed to report the gifts on his financial disclosure forms.
But as testimony wore on in Dougherty’s latest trial wore on Monday, defense lawyer Greg Pagano put forth an explanation for why an electrician’s union spent so much money on sports and entertainment costs and distributed them so widely among influential business and political leaders in the city.
“Mr. Dougherty catered to those people,” he said, in his questioning of Lazer. “Some were employers of electricians. Some were people you got work from,” he said. “Mr. Dougherty would not always be there, but someone [from the union] would be in his place. … That was work. It was marketing. It was networking.”
Lazer agreed.
As part of the union’s contract with the city’s three main sporting and concert venues, she said, the union often ended up with dozens more tickets to events than recipients, in which case Dougherty would pressure her to find someone to use the extra passes so they wouldn’t go to waste.
She remembered having to drum up interest in tickets to a 2015 concert by the Zac Brown Band at Citizens Bank Park. As she recalled, she ended up taking a few of those herself.
But prosecutors countered, noting that their indictment focused primarily on additional tickets Dougherty instructed Lazer to buy for his friends and family members beyond those given as part of Local 98′s luxury box contract at the arenas.
What’s more — said Witzleben, the prosecutor, while questioning Special Agent Jason Blake, the FBI’s lead investigator on the case — it wasn’t just leftover tickets for Local 98′s luxury boxes that Dougherty family members received.
In 2016, for instance, Dougherty instructed Lazer to buy two tickets to a performance of Beautiful — The Carole King Musical at the Kimmel Center on a Local 98 credit card.
Those tickets, the agent testified, went to Dougherty’s wife and sister.
Testimony in the case is expected to resume Tuesday.