After three decades in courtrooms, Pittsburgh litigator Paul Robinson finds himself on the defense after prosecutors say he crossed a line to protect his son.
By Jason McGahan of NewsWorks Lab and Megan Swift of TribLive
It’s gray and boxy, roughly a foot high, 2 feet deep and 2½ feet wide, according to the former Penn State University student who kept it in his room.
This heavy-duty safe from Wal-Mart turned into more than a place to stash money when prosecutors say it played a key role at the center of the fraternity cocaine prosecution that has rocked Penn State University and ensnared a Churchill father and son, Paul and Thomas Robinson.
What began as a drug investigation involving two Penn State fraternities has grown into something more complicated: a son and father facing felony criminal charges after a young man went from being Tom’s fraternity brother and best friend, a family favorite, to a key prosecution witness.
A police detective testified at a September preliminary hearing that Tom told authorities the safe once held “approximately $5,000 to $10,000 cash and approximately 100 grams of cocaine.”
Prosecutors have charged Paul Robinson, 59, with hindering the prosecution, tampering with evidence and obstructing the law, saying he helped retrieve the safe from a hiding spot in the Centre County woods, put it in his car and brought it home – rather than turning it over to authorities.
Mike DeRiso, the Pittsburgh criminal-defense attorney and former Allegheny County prosecutor representing Paul, said that neither the police nor the prosecutors have asked for the safe – and as far as he knows it is still sitting in the Robinson’s Holland Road house.
“If what they’re saying is true, so what?,” DeRiso said. “You’re going to prosecute a father for doing what any parent would have done? And to make it worse, they don’t even know what’s in the damn safe.”
A spokesperson for Pennsylvania Attorney General Dave Sunday declined to comment on the safe.
Paul Robinson is speaking out about the charges for the first time, telling NewsWorks Lab and TribLive in a statement that his son screwed up and that Paul is doing everything he can to protect his family.
“My son, Tom, obviously made one of the worst decisions while in college 2 years ago, and he knows that more than anyone,” Paul Robinson said (read the full statement here). “… I tried to do everything right after my son was arrested 2 years ago, and I look forward to telling what actually happened when we have that opportunity.”
DeRiso declined to speak on Tom’s behalf, saying he does not represent the son. Tom’s lawyer, Jason S. Dunkle, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
NewsWorks Lab and TribLive combed through hundreds of pages of court records, sat through six hours of preliminary hearings, talked with lawyers on both sides of the case, and spent time on the Penn State campus to tell this story.
At the time of Tom Robinson’s 2024 arrest, State College police found one safe sitting on a mini-refrigerator in his Delta Upsilon fraternity-house room. That safe contained 8.2 grams of suspected cocaine, $1,862 in cash, a Kimber .45-caliber handgun loaded with seven bullets and other evidence, according to a criminal complaint against Tom filed by the State College police.
Police didn’t go looking for the second safe at the time of Tom’s arrest, but it was carried out from under their noses, driven miles away and dumped in the woods, according to the testimony of a prosecution witness.
For the moment, it was gone.
The trouble was that Tom’s father, Paul Robinson, would soon know where it was — and when he found it, prosecutors say, he crossed a line to protect his son.
A managing partner and civil attorney at Meyer, Darragh, Buckler, Bebenek & Eck, the century-old Pittsburgh firm with offices in the U.S. Steel Tower, Robinson has spent more than 30 years in courtrooms. His trial teams have “tried over 80 civil cases to verdict” and handled hundreds of arbitrations and alternative dispute resolutions, he wrote on his LinkedIn page.
Over that time, Robinson built a reputation for having an aggressive edge, a colleague said.
“He’s wound up tight,” said Mark A. Eck, the son of one of the firm’s founders, who estimated that he and Robinson had worked together for roughly 30 years. “That short hair close to the head, that gives you the idea. What the hell goes on inside that head we don’t know.”
Eck declined to elaborate.
The heart of the prosecutors’ case focuses on the cocaine business they have charged Tom Robinson, 23, and 12 other Penn State students with running.
Paul Robinson said in his statement that his son initially cooperated with prosecutors to own up to his mistakes and move forward.
“After these past 2 years of doing everything right and fully admitting what he did to try to move forward, Tom was re-charged with the same crimes …,” Paul Robinson said. “His honesty was used against him, and it put him into a now deeper hole, but he still continues to do everything he can to show that his terrible mistake in college is not who he is.”
In one year while he was a student at Penn State, prosecutors allege, Tom Robinson’s cocaine business went from a small, closed network — friends selling to friends, fraternity brothers selling to fraternity brothers – – to a drug operation that reached beyond the Penn State community.
Tom’s cocaine supplier was Agostino Abbatiello, 24, of Westbury, N.Y., the accused ringleader of the cocaine trafficking ring and then-brother at Sigma Chi, according to court documents and witness testimony.
Over a 15-month span, Tom was involved in 10 transactions totaling $143,000, purchasing cocaine from Abbatiello, according to Tom Robinson’s testimony. The purchases occurred between August 2023 and November 2024, with amounts escalating from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, Robinson testified.
The cocaine came from New York: Robinson confessed in court testimony that he bought up to a kilo at a time from Abbatiello, who had associates bring it to State College from Long Island.
To keep it secret, prosecutors say, the operation depended on pledges and fraternity brothers observing an unspoken code of silence.
According to court documents, Robinson, a former finance student, turned a basement boiler room at the Delta Upsilon fraternity house into a cocaine-processing hub. As the fraternity pledge educator, a position of authority, he enlisted pledges to chop, weigh and package the drug, according to testimony by pledges and fraternity brothers cited by prosecutors in the presentment.
Preparing a kilogram for sale took about two days, or 10 hours spread over two days, according to witness testimony before the grand jury.
An Instagram post on Tom’s account from May 2024 shows him lounging on a sofa, a blonde woman draped under one arm as a young couple canoodles beside him. A bottle of Hennessy sits on the table. The caption: “Brick by brick,” followed by a brick emoji.
By then, as Robinson later testified, his largest cocaine purchase was 500 grams. He admitted that he later made three one-kilogram purchases for $22,000 each in July, September and November 2024.
In early December 2024, on the way back to campus after Thanksgiving break, Robinson wrote in a text to his father – which is part of the court records and that DeRiso described – that he had $22,000 stashed away. Tom wrote, “If you need money, take it.”
This was before police arrested Tom on drug charges, and DeRiso said he was not being serious.
“Since Paul Robinson makes good money, I think there was some sort of a joke coming off of Thanksgiving,” DeRiso said.
As the operation spread beyond Delta Upsilon, fraternity brothers warned Robinson that the cocaine business was “getting too big” and that he was “exposing himself and people around him to being arrested,” Ryan Matson, Robinson’s “best friend” at Delta Upsilon, said in his testimony to the grand jury, according to the prosecutors’ presentment. Matson said Tom ignored them.
“Robinson … continued to deal drugs and expand his customer base by selling to non-fraternity members,” he testified.
Matson was “heavily involved” in Thomas Robinson’s “cocaine distribution operation,” according to the grand jury’s presentment against Paul Robinson. Before his involvement, Matson “observed [Tom] Robinson selling cocaine to fraternity brothers inside the house and frequently heard [Tom] Robinson discuss the money he was making from those sales.”
Matson’s role entailed cutting cocaine with creatine, a muscle-building supplement, packaging it into smaller half-gram and one-gram bags for resale and delivering it to fraternity brothers who were purchasing it from Robinson, the presentment says.
Prosecutors have not charged Matson with any crimes. NewsWorks Lab and TribLive reached out to Matson via his LinkedIn page, but he did not respond.
Matson testified that Robinson had initially stored bricks of cocaine in a “grocery bag” underneath his roommate’s bed. After discovering the roommates were helping themselves to the cocaine, Robinson wanted to get a safe, Matson said. Robinson also worried the police were onto him after he got pulled over for a speeding ticket, according to the presentment.
Tom and Matson found the safe at a Wal-Mart near campus, Matson testified. Tom bought it, and he and Matson drove it back to the apartment Matson shared with roommates, just around the block from the fraternity house. Tom offered Matson and one of his roommates $100 a month to keep the safe in Matson’s room, according to the presentment.
Matson testified that he watched Tom fill the safe with cocaine bricks inside Ziploc bags.
Tom kept the key and combination, Matson said, adding in court that he couldn’t open the safe himself. Every two or three weeks, Robinson returned to retrieve drugs or add to the supply, Matson testified.
Then Tom got busted.
In the dark before dawn on December 13, 2024, law-enforcement vehicles rolled down Locust Lane, past a row of fraternity houses. They converged on the manicured grounds of the Delta Upsilon house.
By 6:30 a.m., State College police arrested Tom Robinson.
At first, he mistook the predawn raid for a fraternity prank and resisted arrest, the police criminal complaint says.
“I’m gonna f— you up,” he told the officers.
They tased him into compliance and led him away in handcuffs.
Prosecutors believed they had plenty of evidence: Confidential informants had bought cocaine from Robinson — “T-Rob,” as he called himself — at the fraternity house. Prosecutors said he had communicated with customers on Snapchat and accepted payments for half an ounce or more through his personal Venmo account.
Matson heard about the bust and panicked, he later testified.
Matson and his roommate, who also has not been charged with a crime, loaded the second safe into a duffel bag, put it in the roommate’s truck and drove about 35 minutes from campus to a wooded area off East Mountain Road in Centre County, according to grand jury presentment.
Matson testified that he carried the safe into the woods and hid it next to a tree and covered it with leaves and dirt and sticks.
For a moment, the safe had disappeared.
It would not stay that way.
Matson testified that Paul Robinson learned about the safe on the ride back to the fraternity house from the Bellefonte jail, where he had just posted $150,000 bail for Tom.
Tom used his father’s phone to call Matson, he testified. Matson said he did not recognize the number but answered. He described in court how he heard the road beneath the tires and a slight echo. Tom was in a car, Matson figured, with the phone on speaker or connected by Bluetooth.
Then he said he heard Paul’s voice, as clear as Tom’s.
Tom mentioned the safe. He called it “the package,” Matson testified.
Where was it?
“I took care of it,” Matson said he told Tom.
The safe was still where Matson had left it, buried in the woods.
Matson testified that he had made a candid admission to Tom: Before deciding on the woods, he had considered throwing the safe into a lake.
Tom replied that he was glad he hadn’t, Matson said in court, because the safe was loaded with cash.
DeRiso now says that neither he nor the police and prosecutors know what, if anything, was in the safe. “No one knows what was in the safe,” he said.
Matson and the other fraternity brothers had their winter formal that night. Despite everything that transpired with the arrest that morning, they dressed up and welcomed their dates.
Tom returned to his room and packed his belongings.
That evening, according to the prosecution’s presentment, Paul sent Matson a text and they met up at the fraternity house. Matson testified to the grand jury that Paul wanted to retrieve the second safe to “help his son.”
Two days after Tom’s arrest, Matson testified, Paul and Tom drove back to State College. Paul picked up Matson at around 10 a.m. on that Sunday morning, and Matson later testified that, together they retraced the route into the woods. Tom remained back at the Delta Upsilon house to finish packing his belongings.
“Matson got out and found the safe where he had buried it,” the presentment says. “He placed the safe in the third row of Paul’s vehicle and covered it up with a blanket.”
Paul and Matson returned to the Delta Upsilon fraternity house, and Matson left the safe where he had put it in Paul’s car, according to the presentment. Paul drove home to Churchill.
Nearly two years passed.
Tom Robinson cooperated with Centre County authorities and gave up the identity of his cocaine supplier, a police detective testified.
Matson also met with authorities but later testified that he initially never mentioned the existence of the second safe.
Later, under threat of prosecution, Matson disclosed the existence of the second safe. He became a witness against Paul Robinson.
Matson testified at the preliminary hearing earlier this month that he never opened the safe, nor had he seen anyone open it in front of Paul. Under cross-examination, Matson acknowledged that he did not know what was inside when Paul helped retrieve it. On redirect by the prosecution, he said he had hidden the safe because he believed it contained evidence of his complicity with a crime.
At the defense table, Paul listened, his eyes fixed on Matson.
Where is the safe now? Investigators said they have received conflicting accounts.
At first, prosecutors said, Tom told them his father had taken it to the family home in Churchill, a quiet neighborhood of mid-century houses on wooded lots, home to lawyers, doctors, executives and other Pittsburgh professionals.
The house sits near Edgewood Country Club, where Paul is a member and scratch golfer. In June, he placed in the club’s Men’s Invitational, according to a social media post.
Patrick Thomassey, a Pittsburgh defense attorney, plays golf with Paul in Edgewood and said he’s known him both professionally and socially for over 25 years, calling him a “good guy.”
Thomassey, 78, of Monroeville, has been practicing criminal law for 50 years and said Paul has a “really good reputation in the legal community and a better reputation in the social community around Pittsburgh.” He added that “Paul did what any parent would do.”
Later, Tom told police the safe was at the family’s Laurel Highlands getaway near Seven Springs, a large house on an 84-acre property.
Tom said he saw the safe was at “his family’s home,” and it was empty, the presentment says. However, the State College detective said on the witness stand that Tom told him conflicting statements as to which family home: Pittsburgh or in the mountains.
The mystery remained open when Judge Jonathan D. Grine gaveled the Sept. 2 hearing to a close, saying enough evidence exists for both Tom and his father to head to trial.
Jason McGahan is a staff writer for NewsWorks Lab who can be reached at jmcgahan@newsworkslab.com.
Megan Swift is a TribLive reporter covering trending news in western Pennsylvania, who can be reached at mswift@triblive.com.
This story is a collaboration of NewsWorks Lab and TribLive. NewsWorks Lab is a public-benefit company owned by Trib Total Media to produce high-impact, accountability journalism as a free, open-source resource. You may find more information at NewsWorksLab.com.
Copyright NewsWorksLab, LLC 2026.
