Ex-City Council staffer sentenced to three months for collecting COVID unemployment checks while on city payroll

A former staffer for Philadelphia City Councilmember Cindy Bass has been sentenced to three months in federal prison for illegally collecting nearly $30,000 in pandemic unemployment benefits while he was on the government’s payroll.

Michael Daniels, 47, had worked as a constituent services representative in Bass’ office for four years, helping residents in her Northwest Philadelphia district navigate government programs such as enrolling for benefits available to the unemployed.

He was transferred to the Office of the City Commissioners, which oversees voting in the city, five days after he was charged by federal authorities last year and was eventually suspended and resigned because of the case against him.

“I can make excuses all day in regard to how I feel these charges were brought about,” Daniels told U.S. District Judge Michael M. Baylson during his sentencing hearing Monday. “But that’s another story. … Did I make a bad decision? Yes.”

Federal officials have said efforts to quickly get money to people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic left programs such as unemployment assistance particularly susceptible to fraud.

Earlier this year, the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Labor estimated that more than $160 billion in pandemic unemployment benefits — or nearly 20% of the $872.5 billion paid out — went to people ineligible to receive them. And Daniels is hardly the first public employee in Philadelphia to face charges for filing false claims for an extra paycheck.

Prosecutors in late 2021 charged eight civilian employees of the Philadelphia Police Department with illegally filing for a combined $88,000 in benefits. Meanwhile, Vincent Rotondi, a former detective in the District Attorney’s Office, is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to collecting more than $30,000 in benefits while working full time.

But Daniels is the second person in Bass’ orbit to find himself facing a federal sentence for misusing public money this year.

In January, the former head of a now-defunct Germantown neighborhood organization controlled by Bass appointees was sentenced to four years’ probation for embezzling more than $125,000 from the organization.

Many of the details of the case against Ingrid Shepard, the ex-director of the Germantown Special Services District, remain under court seal. But Bass said in a statement at the time that she didn’t know anything about authorities’ interest in Shepard and did not believe the case had anything to do with her.

She did not immediately respond Tuesday to requests for comment about Daniels’ case. Nick Custodio — deputy to Lisa Deeley, the chair of the city commissioners — said that their office was unaware that Daniels had been charged in connection with the pandemic fraud when he transferred there but added he was suspended once they found out.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, marveled at how Daniels had landed a job with the councilmember in the first place. Years before Bass hired him, Daniels was convicted on four separate occasions of illegally possessing firearms and, in 2005, of organizing an armed carjacking and kidnapping of a father and his 4-year-old child.

“Despite [Daniels’] abhorrent and dangerous past … a City Council member in the City of Philadelphia hired him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy M. Lanni said in court filings leading up to Monday’s hearing in which he pushed for a sentence of up to 10 months.

But in court, Daniels’ lawyer, Shaka M. Johnson, accused prosecutors of trying to persuade the judge to sentence Daniels for his past crimes.

“You’re being asked to repunish Mr. Daniels for sins he’s committed and already atoned for,” Johnson told the judge. He maintained his client had turned his life around after his prison stints and dedicated his life to antiviolence work in the community where he and his father live.

Daniels, he said, is a trusted mediator who has helped defuse dozens of conflicts among young people in his neighborhood that could have ended in shooting. It was that work, the attorney noted, that drew the council member’s interest in hiring him.

“There’s no money involved in this,” Johnson said. “He doesn’t get paid a dime. This is him trying to achieve his atonement.”

Still, he maintained, the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 hit Daniels hard. Filing a false claim for unemployment was just “too easy,” Johnson said.

“It’s hard to be a constituent services director, when everyone gets sent home,” the attorney said. “You’re supposed to be interacting with the community.”

Daniels filed his first claim for pandemic unemployment assistance in June of that year, despite still earning his city salary. He continued to collect unemployment benefits for the next eight months, bringing in roughly $27,500 to which he was not entitled.

During an interview with probation officers earlier this year, Daniels described his theft as an “unfortunate situation” and said he did it because he was struggling to support his five children on the $400 a week he took home after taxes from his Council job, according to court filings.

Prosecutors balked at that assertion Monday, noting that three of Daniels’ children are adults, that he only periodically supports a fourth, and that he couldn’t even tell the probation officer the age of the fifth child he was claiming as a dependent — a child he does not have custody of and with whom he has no contact.

Baylson, the judge, agreed.

“The excuse he needed [the money] to support his family is not acceptable,” Baylson said. “He could have just got an extra job. A lot of people do that.”

In addition to the prison term, Baylson ordered Daniels to pay back the $27,500 he stole and serve three years’ probation upon his release.

“Anyone who takes a job with any sort of governmental agency has a real duty to behave themselves with being fully obedient with the law,” the judge said. “It’s really easy for someone working for the city or the state to steal money, but it’s criminal, it’s wrong, and it deserves punishment.”