Chesco man to plead guilty to fraud, weapons charges

Police unfairly targeted the patriarch of a Chester County family linked to two high-profile suburban tragedies, his attorneys argued last month.

But in an apparent about-face, Sean O'Neill Sr., 49, of Willistown, is scheduled to plead guilty today in federal court to single counts of possession and use of a fraudulently obtained green card, a false claim of U.S. citizenship, illegal possession of a gun silencer with no serial number, and tax fraud.

The government's third charging document, filed Monday, dropped multiple counts of several offenses and added the tax offense.

The pleas will cancel O'Neill's May 11 trial, which had prompted an aggressive pretrial assault on the government's case by defense attorneys Michael A. Schwartz and Vincent P. DiFabio. They were unavailable for comment yesterday.

Since Sept. 1, 2006, when Sean O'Neill Jr., then 17, accidentally shot and killed a classmate, Scott Sheridan, during an underage drinking party at the O'Neills' home, "one tragedy has begot another," a defense motion said.

Several days after the shooting, a search of the family's palatial residence led to state firearms charges against Sean O'Neill Sr. Although the charges were dismissed in Chester County Court in February 2008, they spawned a June 27 raid and federal charges that O'Neill Sr., an Irish native, had lied repeatedly about his criminal past to obtain a green card and purchase illegal weapons.

While Sean O'Neill Sr. was awaiting trial, his daughter, Roisin, 23, was accused of driving drunk Sept. 19 in the wrong direction on I-476 in Plymouth Township, killing Patricia Murphy Waggoner, 63, a Brimfield, Mass., grandmother. Roisin O'Neill was charged with homicide by vehicle and related offenses.

Sean O'Neill Jr., 19, is on house arrest after completing two juvenile treatment programs, and his sister has been undergoing operations for crash-related injuries. Pretrial conferences in her case are to begin Monday, according to court records.

During three days of hearings last month, attorneys for O'Neill Sr. portrayed the former owner of Maggie O'Neill's, a popular Drexel Hill pub, as a devoted husband, father of three, and civic-minded builder.

They said prosecutors exercised an anti-Irish Catholic bias and targeted O'Neill Sr. after his son, originally charged as an adult, was transferred to Juvenile Court.

"It is not a quantum leap to conclude that the very reason Mr. O'Neill was pursued by federal authorities in the first instance was because of what may be a sentiment by law enforcement officials that his son did not receive the punishment he deserved and Scott Sheridan did not receive justice," the attorneys wrote.

They called the charges "a thinly veiled attempt to convince the jury that Mr. O'Neill is an Irish Catholic terrorist with a propensity for buying guns and allegedly lying."

As for the illicit weapons, the defense argued that they were not "silencers" but noise suppressors sold at gun shows that O'Neill used to shoot squirrels.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nancy B. Winter and Alex T.H. Nguyen disagreed that O'Neill was the object of any bias or vendetta.

Four of the five investigators who testified during the pretrial hearing said they were Catholic, and one, State Trooper Thomas M. Gilhool, said the Sheridan family had accused investigators of being "pro-Irish."

Prosecutors said that O'Neill Sr. lied about his 1977 conviction in Belfast, Northern Ireland, for membership in an outlawed terrorist group to gain entry into the United States, staged a sham marriage to stay in the States, and used fraudulent documents to get illicit weapons.

The new tax charges include allegations O'Neill paid wages under the table, skimmed cash from his businesses, concealed a United Kingdom bank account from the IRS, and failed to file personal federal tax returns for 2005, 2006 and 2007.

O'Neill's attorneys contended that authorities violated multiple procedures during both searches, and sought to suppress O'Neill's statements to police and the seized evidence, which included weapons, O'Neill's arrest record, and photos of O'Neill with Gerry Adams, the leader of the Irish-nationalist Sinn Fein party in Northern Ireland.

U.S. District Judge William H. Yohn Jr. ruled that only the statements, which were given without a Miranda warning, would be suppressed.