Pittsburgh controller probes $18K in payments to ex-city worker

Pittsburgh’s top fiscal watchdog has launched an investigation into more than $18,000 in payments made by the city to a former employee turned contractor.

Controller Rachael Heisler said Monday that she was looking into possible violations of the state ethics law and, more broadly, rules governing the use of city credit cards.

The inquiry is in its early stages and involves payments made over the past year by the city to Mario Ashkar, 36, of the North Side.

A former city employee with the same name and address was in the news recently when Pittsburgh police charged him in connection with several ethnic intimidation incidents.

It was not clear who Heisler believes might have violated ethics laws or sanctioned the payments that she believes were made inappropriately.

Questionable payments

Since August, the city has paid Ashkar $18,460 through his PayPal account, which has the username PrincessJafar, according to Heisler. Those payments were billed to city credit cards, known as procurement cards, or p-cards.

It was unclear Monday if all the payments were made using one or more procurement cards, who authorized them or whether multiple departments or employees were involved.

The payments to Ashkar appear to be for professional services, which is “explicitly forbidden” in the city’s p-card policy, according to Heisler. It was not clear what specific services Ashkar provided.

Procurement cards are meant to be used for minor expenses such as food purchases, subscriptions and conference registrations. The city’s policy explicitly lists professional services as expenses that never should be charged on one of the cards.

“This is a clear violation of city p-card policy,” Heisler said. “We do have policies and procedures for the use of p-cards, and those policies and procedures were not followed in the instance of these transactions. That’s really, really unfortunate.”

A message left for a phone number linked to Ashkar was not returned Monday.

Heisler did not accuse Ashkar of any wrongdoing, and it was not clear what role if any he played in payments made to him by the city beyond being a recipient.

One city payment to Ashkar, for $1,200, is on the agenda to be approved Wednesday by City Council as part of its weekly review of expenditures on city credit cards, known as procurement cards, or p-cards.

That $1,200 expenditure by the Department of Parks and Recreation is for 40 hours of work by Ashkar under the listing “farmers market coordination efforts,” Heisler told TribLive.

Further information was not available, and it was not clear whether that amount had been spent already or if the department was seeking pre-authorization from council.

Kathryn Vargas, the parks director, could not be reached Monday.

‘Deeply concerning questions’

Heisler urged council members to not approve the expense, according to an email sent Friday and obtained by TribLive.

“This raises deeply concerning questions about the use of city p-cards, including violation of several written policies regulating their use,” Heisler wrote, adding that the controller’s office was reviewing “many serious questions” surrounding Ashkar’s work, the circumstances surrounding the payments and “the use of city p-cards broadly.”

Heisler said her office Friday afternoon received a tip about Ashkar working as a contractor for the city, which prompted her office to examine payments made to him.

According to Heisler, Ashkar had been a city employee in August 2022 and left that position “at some point thereafter.” Payments to Ashkar as a consultant started less than a year later, based on records that Heisler said her office uncovered.

Heisler said she was investigating whether the timing of certain payments violated the Pennsylvania Ethics Act, which forbids former municipal employees from working as contractors for their former public employers for at least a year.

Ashkar began to receive payments as a contractor in July for work done a month earlier, according to Heisler.

Heisler said the first payment to Ashkar as a contractor was in the form of a check that was paid out in July 2023 for work done the prior month. Ashkar’s name was misspelled on the check, but she said that her office was able to link it to Ashkar through his address.

City Councilman Bob Charland, D-South Side, said he would support pausing the payment while Heisler’s office investigated further.

“There’s no tolerance for wasting taxpayer dollars,” he said. “The public trusts us to spend money properly and there’s no excuse not to.”

Charland said the incident underscores the need to “look into much more around p-cards and how the city’s been using them and spending them.”

The problem seems to have come to light only after Ashkar was charged with a crime.

Charland questioned whether the problematic payments would have been investigated otherwise, or whether city officials may be unaware of other similarly problematic p-card usage.

City police charged a man named Mario Ashkar in connection with several incidents reported last month in the city’s Mexican War Streets neighborhood.

Police accused Ashkar of snatching an Israeli flag from a home and painting “For Blood and Soil” — a nationalist slogan adopted in Nazi Germany — on a sidewalk.

He is charged with ethnic intimidation, criminal mischief, theft by unlawful taking and disorderly conduct. Ashkar faces a preliminary hearing June 17.