Two former Massachusetts State Police troopers stationed in Framingham have been convicted in relation to actions they took to cowl up their half within the time beyond regulation scandal.
A federal jury in Worcester on Tuesday convicted Lt. Daniel Griffin, of Belmont, and Sgt. William Robertson, of Westboro, on one rely every of conspiracy, one rely every of theft regarding a federal program and 4 counts every of wire fraud.
Just earlier than the Worcester trial commenced, Griffin on Nov. 27 pleaded responsible to 4 further counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of submitting false tax returns.
Both males are going through severe jail time, with a cost of wire fraud alone offering a sentence of as much as 20 years in jail. U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman scheduled sentencing for March 20.
The troopers have been stationed on the Traffic Programs Section at State Police headquarters in Framingham.
According to the indictment filed December 2020, the pair “and their coconspirators would purposely arrive late to, and leave early from … Overtime shifts on a regular basis.” The scheme, which dated again to 2015, included having the entire crew register the identical false hours labored at their pay stations.
When the scheme to defraud the state of huge quantities of cash to pay time beyond regulation they didn’t truly work, Griffin and Robertson labored to cowl up their deeds by shredding key information and varieties, the indictment states.
Then, in July 2019 an inner memo circulated within the MSP relating to lacking varieties — the identical sort of kind that the conspirators had shredded — and Griffin submitted a memo to his superiors “that was designed to mislead them by claiming that missing SP-637 forms were ‘inadvertently discarded or misplaced’ during office moves,” the indictment states.
Griffin’s further expenses to which he pleaded responsible in November are associated to him spending a big period of time he was on the general public dime as an MSP lieutenant — amassing common pay in addition to fraudulent time beyond regulation — truly working his safety enterprise, Knight Protection Services, in accordance with the indictment. From 2012 to 2019, Griffin collected almost $2 million in income from his enterprise however hid greater than $700,000 of that from the IRS.
He additionally defrauded a personal college attended by two of his kids by acquiring greater than $175,000 in monetary help by hiding his Knight Protection Services earnings and submitting deceptive functions.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”