Labor leader John Dougherty’s former assistant gets probation in Local 98 embezzlement case

READING — Ex-labor leader John Dougherty’s former driver and assistant was sentenced to three years’ probation Thursday, making him the third person sentenced this week in a scheme that drained more than $600,000 from union coffers — and the first to avoid prison.

Niko Rodriguez, 32, pleaded guilty in 2022 to embezzling union assets, admitting he’d spent much of his workdays running personal errands for Dougherty and using his boss’ union credit card to buy more than $1,000 in goods including groceries from Target, baby food, diapers, and an IKEA mattress.

He’s agreed to pay back more than $13,000 to Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for personal charges he racked up for himself, Dougherty and members of Dougherty’s family in 2014 and 2015.

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Rodriguez apologized to the union members for his crimes at a sentencing hearing Thursday before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl.

“I deeply regret my actions and the embarrassment I’ve caused my family,” he said. “Standing here in this situation is truly embarrassing and the ultimate low.”

While Dougherty was not at the hearing — the third this week for a close ally charged alongside him in 2019 — the former labor leader’s presence was felt in the Reading courtroom.

In court filings, defense lawyer Paul Hetznecker described Dougherty as “like a second father” to Rodriguez, dating to when he was a teenager.

Rodriguez, Hetznecker said, was a “hard-working and dutiful young man” working at Dougherty’s behest. “We’re talking about a very young man at a time in his life when I believe he was very vulnerable,” he told Schmehl on Thursday.

Since Rodriguez’s decision to plead guilty and resign his post with the union, Hetznecker added, Rodriguez has undergone what he described as a “painful process … to become independent from others who were extremely important in his life.” He did not specify Dougherty by name.

“Since I’ve become an adult,” Rodriguez later told the judge, “the union is all I’ve known.”

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At the time of the theft, Rodriguez was 24, and part of a group of young union employees known as “the kids,” who spent their days at Local 98 running personal errands for Dougherty, including picking up the union chief’s dry cleaning, checking on his home repairs, driving his wife to appointments, and placing regular sports bets with a South Philadelphia bookie known as “the guy on Passyunk.”

His messages with Dougherty were frequently featured during the union chief’s trial in December, as his boss directed him to run such errands as picking up his personal mail and trash, and bringing Chick-fil-A sandwiches to his wife.

“Should I water the tomatoes while I’m here?” Rodriguez texted Dougherty in 2015 after washing the sidewalks in front of his South Philadelphia home.

“Yes!!!” the union chief responded.

Brian Fiocca, Dougherty’s nephew, who was also 24 at the time and worked in a similar union role as Rodriguez, pleaded guilty to embezzling union assets in 2022 and is expected to be sentenced in March.

During Thursday’s hearing, both government and defense lawyers acknowledged Rodriguez’s young age at the time of his thefts, now a decade old. Still, Assistant U.S. Attorney Bea Witzleben said, “He took things from union members who were paying his salary through the fruits of their own labor.”

“It’s not OK to take things that don’t belong to you,” Witzleben said. “It should hurt when you’re caught.”

Rodriguez’s wife, in a statement to the judge, said, “This isn’t the kind of person he is.”

In addition to the term of probation and the money Rodriguez has agreed to pay back to the union, Schmehl ordered Rodriguez to complete 80 hours of community service, and to pay a $5,000 fine. Saying Rodriguez “really appears to be rehabilitated,” the judge credited the family support Rodriguez continues to enjoy and his work since pleading guilty as a project manager for a union commercial contractor.

Family members in the courtroom muffled sobs and hugged in relief as they learned that Rodriguez would not be headed to prison, becoming the first of the defendants sentenced in the case so far to avoid that fate.

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On Tuesday, Schmehl sentenced Michael Neill, the former head of Local 98′s training program, to 13 months in prison. The judge on Wednesday ordered Marita Crawford, the union’s longtime political director, to spend 15 days behind bars followed by three months’ house arrest.

In all, Dougherty, Rodriguez, Neill, Crawford and two others — Fiocca and former Local 98 president Brian Burrows — have been convicted in a scheme that siphoned more than $600,000 from union coffers between 2010 and 2016 to pay for items ranging from birthday bashes and home renovations to cereal and bath mats.

Burrows and Dougherty — who were convicted on embezzlement charges in December — are scheduled for sentencing in April and May, respectively.