Ex-SEPTA manager gets 3 years for taking bribes of Barbra Streisand tickets, pope’s visit hotel stays, and thousands in cash

A former SEPTA manager was sentenced to just over three years in federal prison Monday for extorting bribes of cash, concert tickets, and pricey hotel stays from a company that held the transit agency’s $5.3 million maintenance contract for its surveillance cameras.

James Stevens, SEPTA’s former director of video evidence, apologized to his family and his former employer of 45 years, chalking his crimes up to an aberration motivated by greed. He pleaded with U.S. District Judge Gerald J. Pappert to spare him from time behind bars, citing the effect it would have on his family.

“My poor choices and judgment were overcome by greed — plain and simple,” he said. “I saw an opportunity [to get] money and extra favors without harming SEPTA … and I took advantage.

But the judge questioned Stevens’ contrition — noting that he showed next to no emotion as family members begged the court for mercy on his behalf — and he balked at Stevens’ suggestion that SEPTA had not been harmed by his misdeeds.

“There’s a lot of folks [in Harrisburg and] the rest of the state that don’t want to fund things in Philadelphia,” Pappert said. “They ask themselves, ‘Why are we taking tax dollars from Crawford County and giving them to SEPTA … because it’s just a corrupt black hole down there. Don’t think that at the right time, and in the right place, that this case won’t come up.”

He continued: “Nothing that happened over the course of four years at SEPTA with Mr. Stevens is acceptable or excusable.”

The 37-month sentence Pappert imposed — which also included a $25,000 fine and an order that Stevens forfeit more than $99,0000 — came five months after the 71-year-old former supervisor pleaded guilty to 15 counts including conspiracy, bribery, extortion, and honest services fraud.

And throughout Monday’s hearing, prosecutors painted him as bully whose demands for payoffs from an executive at Spector Logistics — the Delaware-based firm that held the camera contract until 2018 — were as unstinting as they were callous.

Throughout the four years Stevens was extorting Robert Welsh, Spector’s former chief operating officer, he repeatedly reminded him that he had the authority to cancel the contract at any time if his demands were not met.

As Assistant U.S. Attorney Louis D. Lappen described it in court Monday, Stevens’ requests were relentless.

Between 2014 and 2019, Welsh sent him monthly cash bribes totaling nearly $86,000, which Stevens referred to as a “consulting fee.” He demanded that Welsh keep him wined and dined by picking up the tab for regular restaurant meals across Center City.

Stevens had Welsh buy him concert tickets to Barbra Streisand and Billy Joel tour stops in Philadelphia in 2016 and 2017. And at Stevens’ insistence, Welsh also covered the cost five years in a row for the SEPTA manager’s departmental holiday party at the Center City bar Moriarty’s — at a cost of $4,700.

When, during Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to Philadelphia, Welsh booked a set of rooms at the Loews Hotel in Center City so his staff could be on hand in case of problems with SEPTA’s cameras during the visit, Stevens insisted that they be handed over to him and other transit agency employees instead.

Stevens even demanded that Welsh donate $4,400 to a supposed charity he oversaw — money prosecutors say Stevens pocketed and later used to cover his mortgage.

To keep that flow of benefits coming even after he retired from SEPTA, Stevens insisted that Welsh offer him a post-retirement job.

“This became a way of life for [Stevens],” said Lappen. “Every single year for at least four years, he took advantage of Mr. Welsh. … He was entitled, he was greedy, and he engaged in this over and over again.”

The extortion came to an end only after Welsh finally refused one of Stevens’ requests. In 2017, the SEPTA manager insisted that Welsh give his administrative assistant at SEPTA a part-time job and even drew up a contract himself between the woman and Spector, setting her pay rate at $25 an hour. Welsh, though, refused to sign it, insisting that he couldn’t afford the addition to his payroll.

Within months, Stevens made good on the threat he had been holding over Welsh’s head for years. He informed him that SEPTA would be terminating Spector’s contract and, knowing that the company was almost entirely reliant on its business with SEPTA to stay afloat, suggested that Welsh consider selling his firm.

Stevens even picked out the buyer — another firm that Welsh ended up selling his company to for $300,000.

In court Monday, Stevens acknowledged that he treated Welsh — who pleaded guilty in 2023 and is still awaiting sentencing — as an easy mark.

“I saw [his] willingness to please,” Stevens told the judge. “He was willing and able, and I took advantage.”

But despite the crimes, Stevens’ lawyer, Rhonda Lowe, maintained that her client had largely been a dedicated SEPTA employee over his nearly half-century career with SEPTA. She argued that the embarrassment and resulting publicity surrounding his case and the loss of his $6,000-a-month-pension as a result of his guilty plea should be punishment enough.

But the judge disagreed, calling her request for a sentence without prison time “completely inappropriate.”

Pappert, the Pennsylvania Attorney General between 2003 and 2005, said he had seen first-hand the effect a high-profile corruption case can have on a government office and alluded to his time as the state’s top prosecutor less than a decade after one of his predecessors in that role, Ernie Preate, was forced to resign and was sentenced to 14 months in prison for a federal mail fraud case.

And as Monday’s hearing drew toward its conclusion, SEPTA’s general counsel Gino J. Benedetti described a similar stigma hovering over the transit agency since the discovery of Stevens’ crimes.

“It’s an uphill battle for SEPTA day-in and day-out,” he said. “What Mr. Stevens did with these offenses absolutely … has had a broad and long-lasting impact on our credibility to deliver the services so many people rely on.”