PROSECUTORS BUILT A FINANCIAL TRAP AROUND SANDUSKY ACCUSER AND HIS MOTHER
The Jerry Sandusky case has been presented as a story about children and a predator. But buried in a cache of newly obtained emails, bank records, and trust correspondence is a story about money, control, and two prosecutors who set up a financial trap to keep their own witness from telling the truth.
Senior Deputy Attorneys General Frank Fina and the late Joseph McGettigan didn’t just prosecute Jerry Sandusky. After the conviction, they took control of the trust created from the civil settlement paid to key accuser, Sebastian Paden.
What Paden Said Under Oath
At trial, McGettigan asked Paden whether he had a lawyer.
“No,” Paden said.
McGettigan pressed: Did his mother tell him she was going to get a lawyer?
“No,” Paden said. “You’re my lawyer.”
McGettigan responded: “Are you going to pay me?”
“Yeah, I’m going to try,” Paden said.
The jury heard it. McGettigan moved on.
The Referral Pipeline
Paden got the biggest settlement and the least control
During or immediately after the criminal prosecution, McGettigan referred Paden to civil attorney Dennis McAndrews. McAndrews referred Paden to civil attorney Stephen Raynes. On April 28, 2015, Penn State paid Paden $20 million.
McGettigan left the Attorney General’s Office on April 11, 2013 — less than a year after the June 2012 conviction — and joined McAndrews Law Offices in Berwyn, Pennsylvania.
The Twin Trusts
The day before the settlement was paid, on April 27, 2015, McAndrews — now McGettigan’s law partner — sent an email to Paden’s mother, Marie. The email spelled out the financial plan.
Paden would receive his settlement through an irrevocable trust administered by Susquehanna Trust. Marie would receive a separate $600,000 trust, funded from her son’s trust.
Marie’s trust would pay her $1,000 per week for two years. After that, all distributions would be at the trustee’s discretion.
McAndrews then imposed a gag. “Because the settlement is highly confidential, and we are all legally bound by this confidentiality,” he wrote, Marie was legally prohibited from disclosing the financial arrangements.
Marie had no independent counsel. She did not understand the trust structure — “not sure what to do next with it,” she wrote. She told McAndrews: “I do trust whatever you did to set things up.”
The Protective Committee
They had something in mind and it was not justice
Paden’s trust was controlled by a Trust Protective Committee, which had veto power over all distributions exceeding $100,000 per year. Committee members could not be removed without a court order. They received a guaranteed minimum of $5,000 per year, plus hourly compensation and expense reimbursements paid from Paden’s trust.
The committee consisted of three members: Frank Fina, the Senior Deputy Attorney General who co-prosecuted Sandusky; Gay Warren, McGettigan’s wife; and Lauren Cliggett, Paden’s therapist.
Paden received $1,000 per week from his trust — later raised to $1,500 per week. On a trust valued at more than $10 million, Paden was receiving less than one percent of his own money per year.
Fina Embedded in Marie’s Finances
In March 2017, Marie asked the trust about purchasing a house. On March 22, 2017, Stephanie Reece, Vice President and Personal Trust Specialist at BB&T Wealth — the successor to Susquehanna Trust — informed Marie that the trustee had sole discretion to spend up to $200,000 on a residence. She then added, “I’d also speak with Frank about it. I know he’s very helpful with these types of decisions.”
The “Frank” was Frank Fina, the prosecutor in the case.
Marie replied the same day: “Frank has the info.”
The institutional trustee of a federally regulated financial institution was treating the prosecutor as the appropriate decision-maker regarding the witness’s mother’s personal housing decisions five years after the trial ended.
The Financial Cliff
Two men kept control of Paden with the unfullfilled lure of wealth in return for perjury
On April 30, 2017, Marie’s guaranteed $1,000 weekly payments stopped, exactly as the trust had designed. She was now dependent on discretionary distributions from a trustee who deferred to Fina.
Marie’s bank records document the transition. In April 2017, she received two trust deposits totaling $3,183.58. By May 2017, she was transferring $200 from her personal savings account to sustain herself.
On June 1, 2017, the trustee demanded that she submit a written household budget and income documentation before further distributions would be considered. “Unfortunately,” Reece wrote, “we may have difficulty considering any further distributions until we receive the requested budget.”
The mother of the witness whose testimony helped generate a $20 million settlement submitted a resume in response. Her work history: bartender and cook at Henry’s Suds and Subs in Lewistown from 2003 to 2005; manager of the Major League Sports Bar from 2005 to 2011; housekeeper in Jupiter, Florida, from 2014 to 2016.
The Patronage Network
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While Marie submitted a bartender’s resume for permission to pay rent, Paden’s trust funded an expanding network of paid positions — all selected by people connected to the prosecution team.
The network included Trust Protective Committee members Fina, Warren, and Cliggett; Chris Malanga, a power of attorney and life coach who later said of Paden: “You’ve made me so much money, buddy!”; Zachary Weinzetl, a life coach who moved into Paden’s home and slept on the couch; multiple 24/7 therapists, some living with Paden; a retired police officer serving as a security detail; a team leader named Lindsay managing nannies — whom Marie reported to the trustee as never present and overpaid; nannies and doulas; and the Wind Horse therapeutic facility billing for daily sessions.
In June 2017, Marie reported to the trustee that the Colorado team was “overpaid for stuff they aren’t doing” and that “there is a lot of waste going on.” The trustee overruled her. The team stayed. The billing continued.
The Attempt to Escape
In September 2020, Marie contacted an independent attorney, Sarah Brooks, in Colorado to review the trusts. Her email to Brooks said: “How can we get rid and away from all fraud aspects of this.” She reported that Paden was being charged $4,000 per month in rent for a house he believed he owned. She asked for help to “get away from these people.”
Brooks analyzed the trusts and responded on September 22, 2020. Both trusts could not be altered, amended, revoked, or terminated — except by the trustee with the Trust Protective Committee’s approval, by court order, or by Paden’s written request with the committee’s agreement. Options one and three required the consent of Fina and Warren — the very people Marie sought to escape. Option two required litigation she could not afford. Brooks quoted a $3,000 retainer.
The woman who had transferred $200 from her personal savings three years earlier to pay her bills could not fund the litigation to free her son from the trust controlled by the prosecutors.
The Alienation
According to Marie, McGettigan told Paden that his mother was “batshit crazy.” The Colorado team — installed by Fina and Warren, paid by the trust — isolated Paden from Marie. In a September 2018 email to life coach Weinzetl, Marie wrote: “I find myself trapped under Sebastian’s bullshit… I thought this money was to help Sab and not help everyone else.”
By June 2022, the alienation was complete. When Marie asked to see her grandchild, Paden replied: “Leave My family alone… you’re a horrible person… you’re that evil of a person so good luck have fun with your life goodbye mother.”
Marie was now entirely cut off from him.
What the Judge Didn’t See
The judge chose not to look at the witness in the trap
Judge Maureen Skerda dismissed Sandusky’s PCRA petition on February 27, 2026, without the Rule 907 notice required by Pennsylvania criminal procedure. The financial evidence detailed here was being prepared for inclusion in an amended petition at the time of dismissal.
The financial trap was not trial evidence. It was the mechanism used to prevent post-trial evidence — recantations — from reaching the court. That is the definition of governmental interference.
The trust alienated Paden from his mother. Paden ultimately lost custody of both his children — one in foster care, one with an estranged mother. The prosecutors who built the cage around their witness retained control of his millions long after their work was done.
