Retired Massachusetts State Police Trooper Daren DeJong will see two years of probation for his position within the Troop E extra time scandal and should fork over somewhat greater than $14,000 in restitution.
DeJong, 60, of Uxbridge, was sentenced Thursday in federal court docket in Boston by Judge Mark Wolf to 2 years of probation, with the primary six months to be served in dwelling confinement. DeJong was additionally fined $5,500. and ordered to pay $14,062 in restitution.
DeJong in January 2019 pleaded responsible to 1 rely of embezzlement from an company receiving federal funds. He is the eighth and ultimate defendant to be sentenced within the State Police Troop E extra time scandal.
Federal tips for the cost offers for a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail, three years of supervised launch and a high quality of $250,000 or twice the gross acquire or loss, in keeping with the Department of Justice.
DeJong made $200,416 in 2016, together with $68, 394 in extra time, of which the feds have discovered $14,062 was fraudulently attributable to shifts that DeJong didn’t even present as much as or from which he left early, generally by as a lot as seven hours early — in order that’s quantity Wolf has ordered him to pay again.
In explicit, these extra time shifts had been for selective enforcement initiatives: the Accident and Injury Reduction Effort program, or AIRE, and the X-Team initiative, each of that are meant to scale back accidents, crashes and accidents on Interstate 90 — the South Boston-based troop’s major duty — by rising the presence of troopers on the freeway, in keeping with a federal court docket affidavit. AIRE shifts had been 4 hours lengthy, and X-Team shifts had been eight hours lengthy.
The initiatives had been funded at the very least partly by grants distributed by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which funded the State Police greater than $10,000 in 2015 and 2016. The extra time shifts can be one and a half common hourly pay, which got here out prime $75 an hour for DeJong.
The investigation revealed that he did not work for at the very least 140.25 hours of AIRE extra time and 47.25 hours of X-Team extra time.
DeJong tried to hide his fraudulent work hours by submitting bogus site visitors citations, both by way of altering citations he gave throughout his common shift or submitting citations that had been by no means issued. What he uncared for, although, was turning his cruiser on throughout these occasions — which routinely activates the radio and sends a sign to the central State Police receiver {that a} trooper is on the job.
“DeJong’s cruiser radio data for January 24, 2016 showed that DeJong’s cruiser was turned on at 5:09 a.m. and turned off at 2:55 p.m.,” goes one instance of catching DeJong’s fraud in a single court docket doc filed in his case. “The cruiser was not turned back on until 7:27 a.m., the following day, when DeJong’s Paystation records reflect he began working a detail at approximately 8:00 a.m. Thus, the entire time DeJong claimed to be working an AIR overtime shift … Dejong’s cruiser was off — signifying that he was not driving his cruiser.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”