Ironworkers business agent gets 5-plus years in prison

Colleagues say there were two things Ironworkers Local 401 business agent Christopher Prophet simply could not abide: lazy union members and nonunion ironworkers.

The lengths to which those twin loathings drove him have now landed him a prison sentence of five years and three months.

Prophet, 44, of Richboro, pleaded guilty to counts of racketeering conspiracy and extortion, and was sentenced Thursday for leading several late-night sabotage raids on suburban construction sites that were employing nonunion labor. His actions, prosecutors say, were part of a campaign by the union to maintain its grip on city construction jobs.

Prophet, who oversaw the union's presence in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, is the 11th member of the local to face sentencing this year. Long-serving union chief Joseph Dougherty is scheduled to be sentenced next month.

"I have failed myself, and I have failed the innocent brothers and sisters of 401," Prophet, wearing a yellow Local 401 T-shirt and jeans, told U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson.

The sentence Baylson handed down Thursday came six months after the judge rejected a deal Prophet had struck with prosecutors. Under that agreement, Prophet agreed to plead guilty only if the judge would consent to a five-year sentence.

But as Baylson explained it, he thought that Prophet's role as a leader warranted a harsher punishment than those received by rank-and-file members who had already been sentenced in the case.

Prosecutors have said that violence, intimidation, and sabotage were so ingrained in the union's culture that willingness to participate in such crimes often determined who received the best jobs and which members rose to elected leadership positions, which carried six-figure salaries. Union leaders exploited the economic needs of the rank and file by pressuring them to commit violent acts.

"The testimony in the Dougherty trial made it very clear to me that the business agents were key to the success of this conspiracy," Baylson said.

In the end, however, the judge tacked on only three extra months to the prison term to which Prophet had already agreed. He was also ordered to pay $138,278 in restitution.

Prophet's lawyer Timothy J. Tarpey suggested his client had escaped a harsher punishment because he played no part in several arsons carried out by union members, including the 2012 attack on an under-construction Quaker meetinghouse in Chestnut Hill. Those crimes netted business agent Edward Sweeney an eight-year sentence in April.

And unlike the other business agents who have already been sentenced in the case, Prophet never asked members under his command - men he often recruited from the union's apprentice school and softball team - to do anything he was not willing to do himself. His weapon of choice was a sledgehammer, wielded to sabotage building sites for a King of Prussia Toys R Us store in 2010 and a nursing home in Horsham in 2012.

"If they were going to put their lives in harm's way, I thought it was my sworn duty as their leader to be there with them," he said Thursday.

Still, as Prophet apologized in court for his actions, it quickly became clear that he still held grudges against some former colleagues who testified against Dougherty at trial. He accused some of lying and, as prosecutors said in a court filing last month, sent several hostile text messages to fellow ironworkers after the trial ended this year.

Tarpey described those messages Thursday as drunken rantings as his client struggled to come to terms with his own actions, and said they were not indicative of the man's true character.

After all, the lawyer said, Prophet had rushed to ground zero in Manhattan to help clear the rubble after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. And after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, he organized a fund-raiser for the victims.

Prophet, however, reluctantly conceded that his own actions in support of the union constituted their own form of terrorism.

"I am guilty of doing horrible things," he said. "I regret not saying no."

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