Nurse swept up in Johnny Doc probe sentenced to probation for pandemic unemployment fraud

As part of her sentencing, Donna Mangini, 35, agreed to repay more than $34,000 in unemployment benefits she wrongfully collected while working as a nurse in Dougherty's home.

John Dougherty, former head of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, talks to reporters outside union headquarters in October 2021.Read moreTOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

by Jeremy Roebuck

Published Dec. 15, 2022, 5:30 p.m. ET

A home nurse caught up in the federal government’s years-long investigation of former labor leader John J. Dougherty has been sentenced to a year of probation for fraudulently collecting pandemic unemployment checks while working for him.

Donna Mangini, 35, of South Philadelphia, was being paid roughly $5,500 a month to care for Dougherty’s ailing wife, Cecilia, when she first applied for unemployment benefits in May 2020.

As part of her sentencing Wednesday, she agreed to repay more than $34,000 in benefits that she wrongly obtained between February and October of that year.

Dougherty, a political power broker in Pennsylvania and the onetime head of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, has not been accused of wrongdoing in Mangini’s case.

But the payments first came to the attention of federal prosecutors as they combed through nearly all aspects of Dougherty’s life — an effort that resulted in multiple indictments against him and others.

Mangini’s lawyer, Steven F. Marino, said in court filings that by the time she was indicted on multiple felony counts in 2020, she had already agreed to pay back the benefits she received.

She ultimately pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of theft of public money in September.

Mangini “accepts she applied for benefits wrongly,” Marino wrote in court papers. But he urged U.S. District Judge John R. Padova not to sentence her to jail time.

Dougherty resigned his position as head of Local 98 last year, after a federal jury convicted him on bribery charges involving former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon. Both men await sentencing in that case.

Dougherty, meanwhile, remains under indictment in two additional cases centered on allegations that he threatened a union contractor who tried to fire his nephew and that he and other union leaders embezzled more than $600,000 from Local 98 coffers.

A trial on the latter case is scheduled to begin next month.