Out of prison — again — a career criminal wants to show how he is giving back
AG says his fundraising was 'deceptive'
AG says his fundraising was 'deceptive'
AG says his fundraising was 'deceptive'
About a year after the attorney general's office accused him of posing as a fundraiser helping homeless veterans, Sean Murphy was at the New England Center and Home for Veterans donating dozens of backpacks with clothing and toiletries.
"Some people will look at this and say, 'Come on, you were just in prison. You just pled out. Is this a stunt?'" 5 Investigates Mike Beaudet asked.
"No," Murphy insisted. "This is what I told you we were going to do, and finally we're being able to do it. I mean, the stuff was purchased way back when."
Way back when was before he went back to prison last year because of a charge that he posed as a veteran in order to collect money purportedly for homeless veterans.
The visit earlier this spring was just the latest chapter in a saga of crime, incarceration and accusations literally stretching back decades.
On WCVB, Murphy appeared on Chronicle in 1983 for an episode called The Making of a Criminal. He was in prison for breaking and entering and robbery.
Along with a panel of other criminals — including Norman Porter, the "killer poet" who spent 20 years as a fugitive in Chicago — Murphy talked to Chronicle's Peter Mehegan about what made him tick.
"It's just something that you decide to do. You know, it's excitement, but then again there's money in it," he said.
Since then his life of crime continued in a big way.
There was an elaborate 2009 break-in at a Brinks facility in Ohio that involved using a cutting torch to get inside a vault holding nearly $100 million. That job was cut short after the torch ignited stacks of cash inside the vault.
And there was the 2008 heist at a jewelry manufacturer in Attleboro where he stole $2 million in jewelry, including Super Bowl rings made for the New York Giants, who defeated the New England Patriots that year.
He was still on probation for the Attleboro heist when he was charged with stolen valor and larceny for soliciting donations in Swampscott in 2021, triggering the probation violation and a return to prison. He pled guilty earlier this year to the stolen valor and larceny charge, too.
Those collections are what put him on 5 Investigates' radar back in 2022, when our camera captured donation after donation, cash dropped into metal boxes set up outside a supermarket on Cape Cod. The sign on the box said, "Please Help Homeless Vets."
But Murphy still maintains the fundraising for homeless veterans was legitimate and that he only pleaded guilty to avoid additional jail time.
At the time, he was the office manager for Political Petitioning of Massachusetts, or PPMA, a company that hired veterans to gather collections and petition signatures for the cause.
"The collections are to keep the company going," he said at the time.
"Anything that has come in for PPMA has just strictly been for the business," he added. "Everything is legitimate."
Records Murphy shared with us show that of the more than $43,000 donated, only $871 went to a veterans' charity: just 2 cents out of every dollar collected. The majority of the money, he said, went to keep the business running. The remainder paid for the donated backpacks.
The petition that people signed called on Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., to sponsor a bill to eradicate homelessness among U.S. veterans. Murphy said in the most recent interview that no one ever followed up with Markey.
Now out of prison, he met up with 5 Investigates again.
"How does it feel to be out?" Beaudet asked him.
"It's always good to get out, to get back to freedom, get back to working, try to build my life back together," he said.
"Are you remorseful?" Beaudet asked.
"Of course I am," Murphy replied. "Basically, what they said I did wrong was that I had a pin on a hat that said Marine veteran, and that violated the Valor Act."
The guilty plea in January to that and a larceny charge, he said, was based on advice from his lawyer.
"If I didn't plea out, I was going to go from prison to the county jail and held on that $7,500 bail. So my lawyer said, 'Let's just plead out, get a concurrent sentence and get it over with.' So that's what I did," he said.
Now that prison is over with, he told 5 Investigates he wanted to go to the shelter for homeless veterans to finish what he started two years ago.
"How does this make you feel to do something like this?" Beaudet asked.
"Well, it's a completion of the project," he replied.
"In your mind, does this make everything right?" he was asked
"Well, I thought everything was right in the first place. You know what I mean? I don't think we did anything wrong in regards to the petition," he said.
But the Attorney General's office disagrees. It filed a civil complaint against Murphy last year, asking a judge to stop what it calls Murphy's "deceptive solicitation practices." and to order Murphy and others to pay civil penalties.
That complaint is pending, and Murphy has filed a counter-complaint.
"Some people are going to watch this and say, 'You've got to be kidding me?'" Beaudet asked him.
"They can think, whatever they want," Murphy replied. "The facts are the facts."