Tyrone native Sean O’Neill Sr. now faces a possible 38 years in prison, three years supervised probation and a $1.2 million fine. And he has agreed to leave the U.S. and return to his native Northern Ireland upon completion of his sentence.
O’Neill, 49, of Willistown Township, Pa, pleaded guilty to three counts of immigration fraud, one count of illegal possession of a firearm silencer without a serial number, and one count of conspiracy to commit tax fraud.
He previously had been charged with bigamy and other firearms violations. Those charges were dropped and a plea agreement was accepted by prosecutors and defense attorneys on Friday.
Attorneys for O’Neill Sr. had asserted their client’s innocence over the past two and a half years, even stating that he was being pursued because of a perceived “anti-Catholic” and “anti-Irish” bias in the U.S. legal system.
Last Friday, all those precepts were dropped, and a saga that started on September 1, 2006 came to at least a partial legal resolution.
That saga started as an end of the summer teen celebration that ended in tragedies for multiple families.
O’Neill’s son, Sean O’Neill Jr., then 17-years-old, held an underage unsupervised drinking party in the family’s large suburban home over Labor Day weekend, 2006.
The O’Neills were then owners of a popular Drexel, Pennsylvania pub as well two building and development businesses. During the course of the evening, O’Neill Jr., then a senior in high school, shot and killed his best friend, Scott Sheridan, also 17. Investigators unearthed an unregistered gun silencer and paperwork that indicated that the father, O’Neill Sr. had broken several firearms and immigration laws.
As the case against Mr. O’Neill was built, federal and local law enforcement discovered a sham marriage that had allowed him to obtain an illicit green card in 1983. He never sought a divorce in that marriage, and he later married his second wife, Eileen, the mother of his three children.
Even as he was facing the bigamy charge along with the firearms and immigration fraud counts, O’Neill’s daughter, Roisin O’Neill, was arrested in September, 2008 for killing a 63-year-old Massachusetts grandmother, Patricia Murphy Waggoner. Roisin, then 22, was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, marijuana and driving the wrong way on an interstate ultimately causing a head on collision resulting in the death of Murphy-Waggoner. Her case is pending before the court.
Meanwhile, Sean O’Neill Jr., was also not faring well as he was cited for not adhering to the conditions of the adjudication as a juvenile in the shooting death incident.
According to court filings, following the shooting death of his friend, O’Neill, Jr. was involved in an altercation where he broke another teen’s nose and was accused of wielding a knife while saying he had “killed a better man for less.” O’Neill then moved through the juvenile justice system, and has now completed his sentence for the shooting.
Meanwhile, new tax fraud charges changed the complexion of the elder O’Neill’s case.
According to court records, the new charges indicated that O’Neill allegedly paid some of his employees’ wages under the table, this for his multiple businesses and he did not file U.S. taxes for multiple years.
Part of his plea agreement includes an exclusion of prosecution on the tax fraud counts for his wife, Eileen, who worked with O’Neill in the building and pub businesses. Besides their sprawling suburban Philadelphia home, the O’Neills own property in Ireland and at the New Jersey shore. They sold the pub business two years ago.
During court proceedings last week, O’Neill admitted to lying about his past in Northern Ireland when he first obtained his green card in 1983, and a few years ago again when his status came up for renewal.
He had been convicted in the 1970s for membership in Fianna Eireann, the IRA’s youth wing, drunk driving, and several other petty crimes before coming to the U.S., but did not disclose any of those convictions. He subsequently also allegedly lied to law enforcement and in judicial proceedings on several occasion when he claimed to be a U.S. citizen who had been born in Irving, Texas.
“I argued forcefully for Mr. O’Neill not to be able to remain completely free on bail, but it was denied,” said one of the federal prosecutors, Nancy Winter, in a telephone interview.
Winter noted that the judge in the case found “not a scintilla of evidence” regarding the claim made by defense attorneys of bias because of Mr. O’Neill’s Catholic or Irish lineage.
She said the nationality of O’Neill’s first “wife” who helped him obtain his green card had not been publicly disclosed and she would not face prosecution as the statute of limitation had expired. O’Neill was charged because in the renewal process of his green card, he had represented and received “gain” by maintaining the validity of the fake marriage.
Defense attorney, Michael A. Schwartz, commented to the Echo: “Mr. O’Neill has accepted responsibility for his actions and is working to help his family move forward in these very difficult times. We expect that the court will view Mr. O’Neill’s actions in the context of his entire life, and will impose an appropriate sentence that allows Mr. O’Neill and his family the ability to rebuild their lives together.”
O’Neill Sr. will be in court again on August 5 for his sentencing.