At Johnny Doc trial, prosecutors probe union-funded benefits — including Florida and Costa Rica trips — for family and friends

Federal prosecutors closed out a second week of their embezzlement case against former labor leader John Dougherty with a series of witnesses — who perhaps fittingly for a balmy fall Friday — looked like they’d rather have been anywhere else.

Two showed up under court orders compelling their testimony after they invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. Another, a close family friend, agreed as Dougherty’s lawyer sang his client’s praises despite government efforts to use her words against him.

And then there was Dougherty’s niece, Maureen T. Fiocca — the first member of his family summoned to testify by prosecutors seeking to make their case that her uncle and others embezzled more than $600,000 from Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the union he led for nearly 30 years.

The one thing they all had in common? Each, whether they knew it or not, according to government lawyers, benefited from Dougherty’s free spending of union money.

» READ MORE: For leader John Dougherty, union-paid generosity began at home

Fiocca, 29, and the daughter of Dougherty’s sister who is also named Maureen Fiocca, appeared visibly uneasy as she fielded questions Friday from Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello about the part-time, summer job she held at the union while she was attending college at Arcadia University in Glenside.

Prosecutors have alleged Dougherty arranged to pad Fiocca’s paychecks with more than $3,000 for hours she did not work and continued to cut her checks once she returned to school.

And when in 2015, the standout college basketball star earned a chance to compete at a tournament in Costa Rica, her uncle, prosecutors say, made sure his union contributed $4,000 to the cost of that trip for her and a classmate, too.

Fiocca maintained that to this day she still doesn’t know who paid her way.

Dougherty’s lawyer, Greg Pagano, meanwhile, insisted that Fiocca’s payroll records don’t tell the whole story. Fiocca agreed her uncle would routinely call her into work on weekends and odd hours to file paperwork and clean the offices at the union’s Spring Garden headquarters.

The same was true, Pagano said, of Keeley Peltz, 33, who described Dougherty as “like a father” to her and “a dear family friend” before launching into testimony prosecutors hoped would help lead to his conviction.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Local 98 jobs, renovations allegedly paid by the union are focus of John Dougherty embezzlement trial testimony

Peltz also held down a part-time job at Local 98 while attending college — and, as the government tells it, was paid more than $9,000 for hours she didn’t work, including an extra check for roughly $1,700 meant to cover her first mortgage payment shortly after she bought her first home.

Peltz — the daughter of George Peltz, an electrical contractor who pleaded guilty in 2019 to plying Dougherty with gifts of $57,000 to curry favor with his union — said she never worked more than 40 hours a week at her union job and spent at least two days each week attending classes at Albright College in Reading.

But Peltz told jurors she was so busy that she didn’t notice at the time if sometimes her paycheck deposits were double what she would have expected and sometimes they came when she hadn’t been working at all.

Like Fiocca, Peltz said her Local 98 schedule was often erratic. It was not unusual to be called in for marathon work sessions like the weekend she worked nearly around the clock for Local 98 during Pope Francis’ 2015 visit to Philadelphia.

“This was not a 9-to-5 conventional job,” Pagano said at one point. Peltz agreed.

But no one appeared more uncomfortable on the witness stand Friday than John Cooper, a former Local 98 political consultant who prosecutors say was paid $5,000 in 2016 to accompany Dougherty’s then-paramour on a personal trip to Florida.

But Cooper — who began by telling jurors he was only in court because the judge had compelled him to testify — said he didn’t exactly see it that way.

Dougherty has acknowledged he was having an affair at the time of that trip with Marita Crawford, Local 98′s then-political director whom Cooper described as a longtime friend.

As for whether Dougherty cut him a union check to travel with her that year, Cooper insisted: “I never got paid for anything I didn’t work for. I don’t believe I said I got paid to accompany Ms. Crawford — I just don’t.”

Prosecutors sought to show otherwise. Costello played recordings of wiretapped phone calls between the consultant and Crawford in the days leading up to that trip.

» READ MORE: John Dougherty trial: Day-by-day updates

They showed that, at the time, Cooper was uncomfortable with Dougherty’s insistence that he accept the money being offered.

“Johnny talked to me today … because he wants somebody to go with you,” Cooper told Crawford in a May 2016 recording. “He’s got another check for me for five grand.”

In a separate call, Cooper asked Crawford to stop Dougherty from paying him, saying “I don’t want nothing else.”

Crawford explained Dougherty would do whatever he’d made up his mind to do.

“Listen, he’s my boss,” she told Cooper. “You have no say in the matter.”

Defense lawyers shot back that Cooper had previously sought more payment from the union for his work, and had planned to travel to Florida with Crawford before Dougherty cut him that $5,000 check, as the two enjoyed golfing together.

The consultant agreed and, after concluding his nervous stint on the stand, quickly made his way out of court.

As the day wore on, Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, too, had his eyes on the door.

He dismissed jurors for the weekend an hour and a half early, instructing them to report back Monday for testimony to resume.