Report: Rob McCord Was Wearing a Wire

Photo | Matt Slocum, AP

Former state treasurer Rob McCord briefly wore a hidden microphone to tape conversations with political donors in cooperation with federal investigators before stepping down from the job and pleading guilty to extortion last year, the Inquirer revealed on Thursday.

The story asserts that investigators used McCord’s cooperation to gather information on Valley Forge Investment Corp., a company that helped other firms get public financial contracts and collected fees when they did. The story doesn’t reveal any additional wrongdoing by McCord, who has yet to be sentenced for the crimes he admitted last year. 

Last February, McCord abruptly resigned from office and pleaded guilty to two counts of extortion. Federal prosecutors had gotten recordings of the treasurer trying to get more campaign cash out of donors during his run for governor by implying that he could and would use his office to help or hurt them. The Inquirer reports that McCord initially planned to cooperate with prosecutors in private, but decided to go public when 6 ABC, according to the Inquirer story, misreported that he was under investigation for trying to enrich himself.

The investigation McCord participated in seems to be wide-ranging, and its target wasn’t reported. Valley Forge Investment Corp. has collected fees for connecting investment firms to government money-management contracts. Its owner, Richard Ireland, is a generous political donor, according to the story. There are no additional charges in the probe and Ireland, through his lawyer, told the Inquirer he never discussed anything illegal with McCord. Ireland has not been charged with a crime.

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