Former top aide to Rendell sentenced to probation in pay-to-play probe
The Philadelphia Inquirer
HARRISBURG — John H. Estey — a former top aide to Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell whose role as an FBI cooperator fueled a probe of the capital’s pay-to-play culture — was sentenced to one year of probation Thursday for wire fraud.
In a hearing before U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, Estey, 54, of Ardmore, Pa., apologized for the crime that had brought him to court: pocketing $13,000 given to him in 2011 to make campaign contributions on behalf of a phony company set up by undercover investigators running an elaborate corruption sting in Harrisburg.
As soon as agents confronted him a year later, Estey came clean and provided assistance that helped investigations of other top targets, including former state Treasurer Rob McCord.
“I lost my way,” he told the court. “I lost sight of the legal and ethical underpinnings that underscore a life in public service and descended into moral relativism.”
Judge Jones, noting that he expected some would misunderstand his sentence, credited Estey’s cooperation and the own acknowledgement of his guilt in the five years since.
“There’s nothing good to be accomplished by a term of imprisonment,” he said. “It makes utterly no sense. This is both a sentencing and a pep talk. It’s time to turn the page.”
The full extent and impact of Estey’s cooperation remains hazy and was only obliquely referred to in court Thursday. But sources familiar with Estey’s role have likened him to the first domino to fall in a chain reaction that led to other indictments.
Surreptitious recordings he made in 2014 of McCord shaking down business owners for campaign donations led to the treasurer’s guilty plea to charges of attempted extortion a year later and McCord’s own decision to become a secret government cooperator.
Sources familiar with Estey’s role in the wider probe have said that he also let agents record his conversations with contacts in Pennsylvania’s political, legal, charitable and business communities.
As Mr. Rendell’s former chief of staff in Harrisburg and, before that, one of his top mayoral aides, Estey had spent two decades cultivating an extensive Rolodex. He worked in or with multiple white-shoe law firms, and at various points, also served as chairman of the Delaware River Port Authority, the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority, the Independence Visitor Center and as a top official at the Hershey Trust Co.
Before sentencing, several longtime Estey contacts submitted letters to the court vouching for his character and asking the judge to be lenient. They included former Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato, chairmen and presidents from Visit Philadelphia and the Independence Visitor Center, several Rendell-era aides and Cabinet officials and the former governor himself.
“I saw this hard-driving, effective leader go out of his way to help people who were in need,” he wrote in his letter to the judge. “He gave his heart, soul and total energy to serving me, but he never forgot that both he and I served the people.”
Estey left Mr. Rendell’s administration in 2008, began working at the Ballard Spahr firm as a lawyer and lobbyist, and within a year had begun representing the executives of a Florida-based textbook recycling company that would lead to the unraveling of his career.