Embattled Philadelphia landlord pleads guilty to double voting

Sep. 25—Embattled landlord Philip C. Pulley finally got his comeuppance Wednesday in a Philadelphia federal courtroom.

But it was not the 2022 collapse of one of his North Philadelphia apartment buildings — a calamity that displaced nearly 100 residents — that landed him, this time, in front of a judge. Nor was it the piles of unpaid tax and utility bills, building code violations, or complaints from tenants, contractors, and the state attorney general that have chased him for much of the last decade.

It wasn't even the legal fight with his insurance company over $300,000 in damage sustained by his 70-foot yacht when it ran aground near Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 2019 — a dispute that last year landed before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Instead, Pulley, 62, strode into the courtroom Wednesday to admit to an entirely separate set of wrongs — falsely registering to vote and casting multiple ballots in several recent elections.

"Are you pleading guilty because you are indeed guilty?" U.S. District Judge Mitchell S. Goldberg asked Pulley near the end of the brief court proceeding.

The landlord, seated next to his lawyer, responded with a terse: "Yes."

Pulley's guilty plea — to counts including voter fraud, voter registration fraud, and voting more than once in a federal election — came as part of a deal struck with prosecutors after elections officials in Philadelphia flagged his suspicious voter registrations last year and reported them to the FBI.

Under questioning Wednesday from Goldberg, Pulley admitted that between 2020 and 2023 he had simultaneously registered to vote in three different counties, claiming false addresses as his primary residence and sometimes providing fake Social Security numbers.

Then, as former President Donald Trump unsuccessfully sought a second term in the White House in the 2020 presidential race against Joe Biden, Pulley attempted to vote in all three.

He successfully cast an in-person ballot in Montgomery County, where he has lived since the mid-1980s and in 2000 purchased a gated estate in Huntingdon Valley called Stonewall Manor. He had also voted by absentee ballot in Broward County, Fla., where the Pulley family owns a $1.7 million mansion overlooking an inlet and quay.

Were it not for elections administrators denying a request he submitted that year for a mail ballot in Philadelphia, prosecutors say, it's likely he would have attempted to vote there, too.

But undeterred, Pulley told Goldberg on Wednesday, he continued to vote multiple times in elections for at least the next three years.

He voted both in Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties' 2021 and 2023 municipal elections, he said, for which he's currently facing state charges.

And during the 2022 Pennsylvania gubernatorial matchup between then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro and Republican rival State Sen. Doug Mastriano, Pulley voted in person in both Philadelphia and Montgomery Counties — a week after he had also cast an early ballot in Florida.

Prosecutors did not identify Wednesday the candidates for which Pulley voted in any of those races. But voter records reveal he'd registered as a Republican in Florida but as a Democrat in the two Pennsylvania counties.

For his own part, Pulley declined to discuss his voting record as he left the courtroom, accompanied by defense lawyer Brian J. McMonagle.

It's a silence he has maintained since an Inquirer investigation last month highlighted the myriad legal problems he's facing in his capacity as a landlord.

Last year, the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office filed a consumer-protection suit against Pulley and his companies, accusing them of renting apartments with substandard living conditions and retaliating against tenants who complained.

He has sued his insurers over denied claims, including costs linked to the 2022 collapse of his Lindley Tower apartments in North Philadelphia.

And weeks after prosecutors unveiled the voter fraud charges against him this summer, government-backed mortgage financier Fannie Mae hit Pulley and several of his property holding companies with a suit over $60 million in defaulted mortgages.

Those cases remain ongoing, and Pulley is expected to be sentenced in for his election crimes in the coming months. He faces up to five years in prison for each of the four counts to which he pleaded guilty Wednesday.

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