DV Journal

(This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty)

The Chester County treasurer’s side gig of working as an expert witness in civil trials has been dealt substantial blows in the last three years, as her testimony has been excluded from two trials in which she was presumably paid by the plaintiffs to provide expert medical testimony.

In at least one of those cases, the judge ruled that Patricia Maisano, a Democrat elected as the Chester County treasurer in 2017, didn’t have the expertise required to allow her testimony to be considered by the jury.

Those revelations come in addition to a Broad + Liberty report from 2021 showing Maisano has for years claimed she received masters and doctorate degrees from Sheffield State University, or sometimes Sheffield University. Whichever name is used, both describe a website that is really a diploma mill that sells bogus, unaccredited master’s degrees for $399 and doctorate degrees for $499.

(Screenshot source: https://www.sheffieldstateuniversity.com/doctorate-degree-program/ – accessed Nov. 27, 2024)

Yet in neither case did any of the attorneys or judges appear to notice that Maisano’s masters and doctorate degrees were fake.

When reached by phone last week for comment, Maisano immediately cut off the conversation and ended the call. “I’m done now. I’m done now. Do not call me again,” she said before hanging up.

At least as early as 2017, Maisano was describing her “doctorate” degree as being conferred by Sheffield University, as seen on this Treddyfrin Democrats website.

There is, however, a Sheffield University in England, but as Broad + Liberty’s 2021 report noted, “Attempts to verify if Maisano ever attended or was awarded a degree by Sheffield University in England are ongoing, and will be updated when that information is received.”

Two weeks after that report, a spokesperson for the real, accredited Sheffield University in England said, “Our academic verification team have got back to me and said that as far as they can tell, there are no records of anyone studying here with the name Patricia Maisano.” The request for verification also used Maisano’s maiden name. If Maisano did, in fact, ever attend the Sheffield University in England, she has refused to provide any proof.

Working as an expert witness can be lucrative. Plaintiffs or defendants in civil trials often hire experts to testify in order to give the jury a better understanding of facts that require deep mastery of complex subjects, such as a doctor offering expertise on a certain kind of trauma, or forensic accountants who can explain byzantine financial transactions. Such experts are able to charge anywhere from $200 to $1,500 an hour, both in their time for preparing for trial as well as for their in-trial testimony.

Not only must the person have the qualifications to offer expert testimony, but they must also frequently understand rules and regulations of the court that govern how their testimony is offered.

In one of the court cases in which Maisano’s testimony was excluded, her credibility and expertise were called into question, and suffered a withering rebuke.

In a 2021 case from Florida, a woman plaintiff alleged she suffered physical and emotional abuse during four years of her romantic relationship with the defendant. Maisano said the woman suffered PTSD because of the relationship.

But the defendants moved to have Maisano’s conclusions removed from the trial, and the judge agreed.

“Here, the Report [authored by Maisano] contains two and a half pages of vague and conclusory assertions that Plaintiff has PTSD, and that Defendant is the direct cause of this ailment,” the judge wrote. “Nowhere in the Report does Maisano explain the criteria that she used to diagnose or confirm that Plaintiff has PTSD, nor does she explain how she came to the opinion that Defendant was the direct cause of Plaintiff’s psychological ailments.”

In another part of addressing the question of whether Maisano should be allowed as an expert, the judge ruled on a procedure which requires the expert to list other cases in which he or she has testified as an expert.

“As to the fifth requirement, the [Maisano] Report fails to list all of the cases within the past four years in which Maisano has testified as an expert,” the judge noted. “In fact, the Report does not list a single instance in which Maisano has ever testified.”

The judge was further critical of Maisano’s alleged expertise.

“However, nothing in Maisano’s credentials indicates that she has extensive or specialized experience in diagnosing or treating PTSD — let alone linking a diagnosis to its root cause. In fact, Maisano is licensed as a nurse in Delaware and Pennsylvania, both of which appear to prohibit nurses from independently offering medical diagnoses,” the judge wrote.

“Moreover, nothing within Maisano’s curriculum vitae convinces the Court that she has specialized training in diagnosing PTSD and its origins. Nor has any evidence been proffered that Maisano is in fact a specialist within this field.”

The judge’s rebuke stands in contrast to a legal experts website in which Maisano appeared to write her own testimonial about her effectiveness in medical cases.

“I have also worked with attorneys as a consultant when have been considering cases and when they have needed the medical game plan for a successful outcome,” the site reads. “My testimony has been favored over Doctors and Psychologists by the courts, with most of the cases I have been involved in hostile and lawyers combative. Although I certainly appreciate the ‘more easy’ case, in this part of the US I have a reputation for handling the ugly.”

In a separate case from North Carolina, Maisano offered her opinions for a plaintiff in a medical malpractice case against Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center based in Charlotte.

In arguing that Maisano should be excluded, Novant’s attorneys wrote, “Both Nurse Maisano and Nurse Boyer fail to qualify as an expert witness…as neither spent the majority of their professional time from the year previous to January 9, 2020 — the date of the alleged incident — in active clinical practice or the instruction of students at an accredited health professional school.”

The filing also took aim at how long Maisano had been away from actual clinical work.

“After earning her RN degree, Nurse Maisano worked as a medical-surgical unit nurse from 1972 to 1974 and later advanced into acute psychiatric work and hematology ending in 1980,” the defense attorneys wrote. “This is the last time Nurse Maisano provided care to patients in a clinical setting and concludes the extent of Nurse Maisano’s clinical experience. Moreover, Nurse Maisano has not administered medications to patients at bedside since 1984.”

(Editor’s note: The previous quote was edited for readability by removing certain legal notations.)

The subsequent December 2023 ruling by the judge excluded Maisano on technical grounds, and as such, did not go into detail on Maisano’s level of expertise — or lack thereof — as the previous judge did.

Using the federal court records database, Broad + Liberty was unable to identify any other federal cases in which Maisano was allowed to testify as an expert.

Maisano keeps a website to represent her availability as an expert witness. On that site, her curriculum vitae says she has worked as a “national patient coordinator” at “Crossroads Head Injury Center” in Pittsburgh. Broad + Liberty is unable to find any evidence of that institution.

There is a Crossroads Speech & Hearing, Inc. located in Pittsburgh and which was established in 1981, but it’s unclear if that’s the institution Maisano is referencing. A request for confirmation of her employment there is pending.

Additionally, the same CV lists her masters and a PhD, but the CV fails to list the institution or institutions from which those degrees were conferred.

Other elements of Maisano’s resume check out.

She was involved in the creation of a company called IKOR that provided senior care and senior care consulting, and eventually sold regional franchise units. At some unknown date, IKOR was sold to RiseMark Brands. In 2016, Investors Management Corporation, a Raleigh, North Carolina, private investment firm, absorbed IKOR as part of its acquisition of RiseMark.

Business records available online at the Pennsylvania Department of State show an IKOR registered in 1993 with Patricia Maisano as president.

A request for comment sent to a senior manager at RiseMark was not returned.

Various IKOR franchises can still occasionally be found, mostly in the northeast.

Sheffield State University’s diploma-mill website, meanwhile, barely conceals its true purpose.

“Sheffield State University offers a wide range of Associate, Bachelor’s, Master’s and Doctorate/PhD in a broad variety of fields. It’s easy: just complete our free, no obligation, evaluation form and submit it to us, risk free,” the site says.

For all of the degrees on the menu, the graduation date offered is “your choice.”

(Source: https://www.sheffieldstateuniversity.com/apply-now/ accessed Nov. 27, 2024)

How can someone apply to Sheffield State? The website’s answer is riddled with grammatical, punctuation, and style errors that would embarrass a middle school student.

“You just have to proceed to the Apply Now, select your desired major in which you have experience and want to grow your career. But it is essential that you provide your complete detail regarding your work or life experiences,” the website says. “Also personal information is required for us to provide accreditation to your degree. As our experts will evaluate your experience for applied degree standards and give you credit as per your evaluation so you can meet industry standards set my Unites Sates Educational Department.

“After that your payment will be verified once we will receive your payment confirmation your order will be proceed to dispatch level. This way you will receive your doctorate degree within 7 days’ time frame with proper process and evaluation so you don’t have any issue when you provide it your employer or experts of your industry. Our aim is to provide growth to your skills and career not to play with it.”

A 2015 report by the Hartford Courant published one of the first news reports to alert the public to Sheffield State’s deceptions, the kind of which had become more common in the internet era.

In 2023, the Irish news outlet RTÉ caught a psychologist widely using the honorific of “Dr.” even though her doctorate was from Sheffield State. She apologized after the report aired.

(This article first appeared in Broad + Liberty.)

In the run up to the Pennsylvania primary in April in the race for state treasurer the assumption among Democrats and most of the press covering that race was that Erie state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro was going to win the Democratic nomination.

Bizzarro had the endorsement of Sen. Bob Casey, Pennsylvania state House speaker Joanna McClinton, the first female and person of color to hold that powerful position, congressional representatives Matt Cartwright, Madeleine Dean, Dwight Evans, Susan Wild, and Mary Gay Scanlon, to name just a few.

In short, just about everyone who is anyone in the Democratic Party went into election night believing Bizzarro was going to win; his rival in that primary, Erin McClelland, was running for the fifth time for office having already run and lost for congress twice for the 12th congressional district as the Democratic nominee losing to Republican Keith Rothfus as well as losing when she ran in the Democratic primary in 2018 against Conor Lamb for the 18th congressional district before dropping out.

McClelland ran most recently for Allegheny County executive last spring, the first Democrat to file for that primary, before dropping out a few weeks before primary Election Day, after failing to submit signatures to the county election division.

That track record going into her fifth race helped convince everyone Bizzarro would win.

Everyone that is except one person: Mike Mikus, a well-respected western Pennsylvania Democrat strategist who told me two weeks before the primary he had a gut feeling McClelland was going to pull it off, saying, “she is a woman and she is from Allegheny County, that is not something to underestimate.”

Mikus was right. By election night McClelland, a former contractor for the Allegheny County’s Human Services Division, sailed through the contest seemingly effortlessly, stunning the southeast machine of the state by earning 56 percent of the vote to Bizzarro’s 44 percent.

Mikus said in an interview Monday “Geography and gender often have huge impacts on the results in low profile primaries because the candidate’s home county is on the ballot,” he said of advantage Allegheny County had over an Erie county candidate.

The last time a candidate for any party from Erie won a statewide primary was when Republican Tom Ridge won the Republican primary in 1994.

McClelland will face incumbent Republican state treasurer Stacy Garrity, a former businesswoman who served as an Army reservist for 30 years that included three deployments to Iraq. The Democratic nominee has had little scrutiny from the press, mostly because few expected her to win, with the exception of a deeply reported story by Penn Capital-Star that showed McClelland campaigned and accepted donations several months before registering a fundraising committee.

Her public campaign finance reports showed that McClelland both began accepting donations and spent them on the campaign expenses beginning in September however she did not register her fundraising committee with the Department of State until four months later.

McClelland, who is seeking the office of the treasurer, whose duty is to “be the custodian of over $150 billion in Commonwealth funds as well as be responsible for the receipt and deposit of state monies and oversight of all withdrawals and deposits from state agencies” told Penn Capital-Star in February that she and her campaign staff had discovered a number of mistakes.

“Going through all of this we have a whole bunch of systemic learning,” McClelland told the Capital-Star.

At the time of that story, a respected Philadelphia Democrat and election lawyer, Adam Bonin, told the Capital-Star that failures to follow campaign finance reporting requirements, even mistakenly, are particularly concerning for a state treasurer candidate, “Given the nature of the particular public office she’s seeking, I think there’s a strong obligation to get that right,” Bonin said.

Since winning two stories have been written about McClelland;  a breezy piece by Spotlight PA outlining McClelland’s efforts to raise money after a contentious primary and an in-depth Post-Gazette investigative piece by journalist Hallie Lauer that laid out a damning Federal Elections Commission complaint filed in March by three Democratic officials claiming McClelland stopped filing reports required by the FEC related to her campaigns for Congress in both 2014 and 2016.

The FEC complaint also outlined her failure to file eleven consecutive reports until the FEC in 2020 administratively terminated her campaign committee. That final report showed McClelland owed over $50,000 in debt.

McClelland did talk to Spotlight for their story; she did not for the Post-Gazette.

Broad + Liberty attempted twice to chat with her for this piece to profile who she is, how she got here, but also to get some of those questions raised by the Post-Gazette answered about her challenges in filing mundane FEC reports but the interview never got off the ground.

Mikus, who worked on one of her congressional campaigns, said her campaign finance issue is a challenge she needs to address.

“She can overcome it if she gets ahead of it by filing amended reports and files timely an complete reports moving forward,” he said.

What may work to her advantage, said Mikus, in a high-profile election year with chaos all around voters tend to not be moved by process problems, “unless they are not addressed,” he said stressing again that McClelland needs to attend to the problems issue now.

There were three other questions Broad + Liberty wanted to ask her for the story beginning with her decision to have as her state treasurer campaign communications director, Chris Benson, an active reporter for United Press International admittedly doing both jobs at the same time.

In fact Benson did a story about McClelland and Garrity without disclosing in the story he worked on her campaign.

One month after the revelation Benson has remained steadfast he has done nothing unethical and still lists his employers as both UPI and McClelland on his bio on X and despite numerous newspapers across the state reporting on this breech of journalistic ethics she has not given a statement to address this.

The other question worth asking McClelland is her use of former legislator Jesse White, who was disbarred by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on his own consent after allegations he misappropriated over $100,000 with which clients entrusted him in 2017.

White — a Democrat, who was elected to the state legislature from the 46th District in 2006 and served until he was defeated in 2014 — became notorious in 2013 for making online posts under a fake name criticizing his constituents and local elected members of his own party, often going on long rants that included calling former Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell a “paid whore” for the natural gas industry.

White now runs a Democratic political consulting and digital management firm called Perpetual Fortitude whose services McClelland used in her primary race against Bizzarro — campaign finance records shows she paid him over $8,000 for political consulting.

While everyone is entitled to redemption, there are former constituents and plenty of Democrats who would like to know why McClelland would choose the services of a man who made the decision to attack members of his own party as well as people who had voted for him, then lost his law license for misappropriating $100,000.

Especially because when White was in office his district covered parts of Allegheny and Washington Counties including South Fayette, Oakdale and Bridgeville, voters that gave McClelland outsized support in the Democratic primary over Bizzarro.

Because of her surprise win for the most part McClelland went under the radar of scrutiny of the press, and in turn the voters, as to who she is, how she would address the circumstances of the state of her campaign filings, and what she believes the role of the state treasurer is.

Her last three posts on X, formerly known as Twitter, were on protecting a woman’s right to choose and abortion rights. Her latest post said, “If you don’t believe women have the ability to make their own choices about their bodies, then I don’t think you have the ability to manage my money in state office.”

Three days after she won the primary over Bizzarro, McClelland posted that as state treasurer, “we can take the shareholder power of the $163 billion in our [state] treasury and make a statement. Let’s do it for our environment, our workers and our society. Let’s be a beacon of humanitarian investment and change the world.”

That statement also raises the question of what she believes the role of the state treasurer is. Let’s hope we get some serious answers to that question and the several others posed in this story.