Francis Joseph Sheeran (October 25, 1920 – December 14, 2003), also known as "The Irishman", was an American labor union official and enforcer for Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino.

He was accused of having links to the Bufalino crime family in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the president of Local 326.

Author Charles Brandt detailed what Sheeran told him about Hoffa in the narrative nonfiction work I Heard You Paint Houses (2004).

[3][4] The book is the basis for the 2019 film The Irishman directed by Martin Scorsese which starred Robert De Niro as Sheeran, Al Pacino as Hoffa, and Joe Pesci as Bufalino.

[7] Sheeran enlisted in the United States Army in August 1941, completed basic training near Biloxi, Mississippi, and was assigned to the military police.

[10] Sheeran said: All in all, I had fifty days lost under AWOL—absent without leave—mostly spent drinking red wine and chasing Italian, French, and German women.

[15] Sheeran also operated out of a bar located in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania which was run by Bill Distanisloa, a soldier under the then powerful Philadelphia crime family captain and future acting boss Angelo Bruno.

[16] According to his biography, Sheeran's first murder was killing Whispers DiTullio, a gangster who had hired him to destroy the Cadillac Linen Service in Delaware for $10,000.

He was also alleged to have conspired to murder Francis J. Marino, a Philadelphia labor organizer, in 1976, and Frederick John Gawronski, who was killed the same year in a tavern in New Castle, Delaware.

[18] Sheeran was indicted along with six others in July 1980, on charges involving his links to the labor leasing businesses controlled by Eugene Boffa Sr. of Hackensack, New Jersey.

[7] According to Brandt's account, Chuckie O'Brien drove Sheeran, Hoffa, and fellow mobster Salvatore Briguglio to a house in Metro Detroit.

[23][24][25][26] Although bloodstains were found in the Detroit house where Sheeran claimed that the murder had happened,[22] they were determined not to match Hoffa's DNA.