McCord to star in trial involving state treasury fees

HARRISBURG >> Former state Treasurer Rob McCord will be the star witness in the trial of a suburban Philadelphia investment adviser whom he secretly recorded in conversations that federal prosecutors say lay out a bribery scheme to land lucrative state investment contracts, jurors heard Friday.

Richard Ireland is charged with 79 moneylaundering, wire fraud, mail fraud and conspiracy charges that stem from federal pay-to-play investigations that also ensnared McCord and a second former state treasurer, Barbara Hafer.

The case against Ireland revolves around lucrative contracts that state officials award to invest billions of taxpayer dollars. Ireland has shared in millions of dollars in Treasury Department fees since 2000, and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Consiglio told jurors in his opening statement Friday that Ireland maintained a yearslong relationship with McCord based on bribery.

Jurors will hear hours of taped conversations between McCord and Ireland, some of them from an FBI wiretap and some from a recording device worn by McCord after he began cooperating with federal authorities in November 2014, Consiglio said. It was perhaps the first time federal authorities had acknowledged that McCord had worn a wire.

The conversations amounted to “I’ll give you this, you give me that,” Consiglio said.

Prosecutors say the 79-year-old Ireland tried to hide his involvement with McCord by funneling more than $500,000 in campaign contributions through friends, family members, businesses and employees of his Valley Forge-based investment marketing business.

McCord, a Democrat, ran successfully for state treasurer in 2008 and 2012. He resigned from the office two years ago before pleading guilty to two counts of attempted extortion, admitting he tried to use his position as treasurer to strong-arm state contractors into donating money to his failed gubernatorial campaign in 2014.

McCord is awaiting sentencing, and Ireland’s lawyer Reid Weingarten attacked him as a relentless, ambitious and insincere manipulator who used Ireland for campaign contributions, not the other way around. On the stand, McCord will be charming and contrite, Weingarten told jurors, because he wants federal prosecutors to help him avoid jail.

“His entire motivation is to stay out of jail ... to get someone else — today, my client — to do his jail time,” Weingarten said. The trial will be “the Rob McCord show,” he said.

At least twice, Weingarten called McCord “their boy,” referring to prosecutors, drawing an objection from Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser that McCord wasn’t their “boy.”

“We’re prosecuting McCord,” Houser told U.S. District Judge John Jones III.

Weingarten countered that a loyal Ireland was trying to help McCord as a longtime friend, in particular by giving McCord $200,000 in late 2014 after McCord had plowed more than $2 million of his own money into his campaign.

In recorded conversations around the same time, Ireland presses McCord to get the chairman of the State Employees Retirement System — the $26 billion pension fund on whose board McCord sat — to invest money in an index fund created and licensed by Ireland, prosecutors say.

“This is very important to us,” Ireland told McCord, according to prosecutors. “We don’t want a damn bone.”

Weingarten said Ireland never sought an exchange of official action for campaign contributions and only pursued advocacy within legal limits. Ireland tried to hide campaign contributions because he did not want fellow Republicans, such as former Gov. Tom Corbett, to know he was helping a Democrat, Weingarten said.

The retirement system has said it believes it has no direct holdings or investments with any companies owned or operated by Ireland.