Defense casts Johnny Doc’s sloppy records of union expenses as a mistake, not a fraud

John Dougherty was known as many things within the union he led for nearly 30 years, his former office manager told a federal jury Wednesday:

A tireless advocate who worked morning to night. A whirlwind of energy, juggling so many tasks that it was difficult to get him to focus on just one. And a generous boss who went out of his way to look out for the people who worked for him.

But one thing he wasn’t, said Lisa Ketterlinus, testifying for a second day in the ex-union chief’s federal embezzlement trial: a scrupulous record keeper.

» READ MORE: As it happened: John Dougherty had Local 98 offices swept for bugs after 2016 FBI raids, documents show

It was not uncommon, she said, for Dougherty to show up with bags stuffed with months of receipts when it came time to reconcile his spending on his union-issued credit card — sessions that devolved into exercises in forensic accounting as Dougherty scoured his memory and old calendars to figure out which charges were for business and which were personal.

He also regularly instructed her to pad timecards for certain employees with no more explanation than that they’d been working hard, she said.

“He did that to make sure people were being taken care of because he didn’t want to take advantage of people — especially people who worked for him?” defense lawyer Gregory Pagano suggested as he cross-examined the witness.

Ketterlinus agreed. Ultimately, she said, she always did what Dougherty told her because: “Mr. Dougherty was the boss.”

The flattering portrait that emerged of the ex-union chief on the second day of Ketterlinus’ testimony stood in contrast to prosecutors’ portrayal while questioning the office manager just a day before.

They’ve accused Dougherty of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from his union — Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — to spend on himself and his family.

But what they’ve described as graft, Pagano sought in his cross-examination of Ketterlinus Wednesday to characterize as benevolent spending — if, at times, sloppily recorded.

“He didn’t attempt to submit phony receipts or anything like that,” the defense lawyer said at one point.

Ketterlinus agreed.

Dougherty’s habit of perpetually filing expense reports months after they were due wasn’t an attempt to hide what he was buying, the defense lawyer suggested. He did so because he was often busy zipping around the state for meetings with union leaders and public officials to advocate on his members’ behalf, Pagano said.

He chalked up Dougherty’s difficulty identifying which dinners charged on his union credit card were family meals and which were for work meetings to Dougherty’s nature as “a creature of habit.” He often frequented the same restaurants — Famous 4th Street Deli, The Capital Grille, the Palm, Termini Bros Bakery — whether dining for business or pleasure, Pagano said.

“There’s an element of memory that has to go into this process,” the defense lawyer said. “He has to remember what these expenditures are.”

» READ MORE: Johnny Doc is accused of spending thousands on his friends and family with Local 98 money. Here’s what prosecutors say he bought.

But Ketterlinus hesitated when Pagano suggested Dougherty had routinely instructed her to classify unclear expenses as personal and to bill him for reimbursement to the union.

“If he didn’t remember, he would err on the side of the union and say, ‘You know what just [categorize it as] personal,’” the lawyer prompted her at one point.

“Sometimes,” she ultimately responded.

As for the padded timecards, prosecutors have accused Dougherty of putting family members — including his niece, Maureen T. Fiocca, and nephews, Sean Dougherty, and George Fiocca — on the union payroll often paying them thousands of dollars for hours they did not work while they were on vacation or off attending college.

Pagano told jurors that Dougherty treated everyone who worked for him “like family.” It’s possible, the lawyer prompted Ketterlinus, that his relatives actually had worked those extra hours given Dougherty’s own round-the-clock schedule.

“If they worked for John,” Pagano asked, “then, probably, right?”

That question drew objections from prosecutors, who used their own opportunities to question Ketterlinus on Wednesday to flesh out some of Dougherty’s less than magnanimous moments.

For instance, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben noted, Dougherty hunkered down after the FBI simultaneously raided more than a dozen Local 98 offices and the homes of several union leaders, including Dougherty’s, in 2016.

Invoices presented to jurors in court Wednesday showed that Dougherty and his codefendant, former Local 98 president Brian Burrows, authorized spending more than $37,000 in union funds in the weeks that followed to sweep the union’s Spring Garden Street headquarters for listening devices.

» READ MORE: FBI searches target electricians union, Johnny Doc, Councilman Bobby Henon

And despite Pagano’s insistence that Dougherty treated his employees like family, the 2016 raids appeared to expose the limits of that sentiment.

A year later, after several Local 98 employees had been interviewed by the FBI or subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, Dougherty gathered them for a staff meeting and to make known he had access to their grand jury testimony, Ketterlinus said.

And — said the office manager who had signed a cooperation agreement with prosecutors — it was not long after that she was informed her job duties would be changed.

After working near Dougherty at Local 98′s headquarters for nearly two decades, she told the jury, she was moved to a union-owned building down the street.