Ringleader of State Police Overtime Fraud Scheme Sentenced To Five Years

DEBARYLIFE – Daniel Griffin, 60, of Belmont was found guilty in federal court in December of four charges of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy, and one count of theft involving a federal program.

According to officials, a former lieutenant in the Massachusetts State Police will be sentenced to five years in jail and paid over half a million dollars for his involvement in an overtime pay fraud scheme in which he approved fraudulent records, destroyed evidence, and misled his superiors.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts, said on Friday that Daniel Griffin, 60, of Belmont, was found guilty in December of one count of conspiracy, theft involving a federal program, and four counts of wire fraud.

Judge Margart R. Guzman of the U.S. District Court sentenced Griffin on Friday to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, restitution, fine, and special assessment costs totaling approximately $508,000.

Previously, after defrauding a private school his children attended, he entered a guilty plea to four further counts of wire fraud and eleven counts of submitting false tax returns. Prosecutors claimed that he got $175,000 in financial aid from the school over several years, all the while hiding handsome earnings from a private security company.

From 2015 to 2018, Griffin headed the overtime fraud ring. In 2020, Griffin and his accomplice, Sgt. William Robertson was apprehended and prosecuted in relation to a fraud conspiracy involving several state troopers at the MSP headquarters in Framingham’s Traffic Programs Section.

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To defraud thousands of dollars from a government grant intended to increase traffic safety, the prosecution said that they planned to leave early and arrive late for their overtime assignments.

The Associated Press stated in 2020 that the troopers were expected to oversee sobriety checkpoints during some of the shifts to stop drivers who might have been intoxicated.

According to the prosecution, Griffin approved and produced fictitious entries on forms between 2015 and 2018. Griffin, Robertson, and other troopers destroyed and burnt documents as the plot was about to be discovered in 2017 and 2018, according to the prosecution.

According to the U.S. Attorney, Griffin informed his superiors that the paperwork had been “inadvertently discarded or misplaced” during the office move.

Prosecutors added that Griffin was charged in connection with an additional plot to deceive his children’s private school by hiding hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue from his security company.

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Griffin was paid overtime money by the state while operating his company, Knight Protection, according to the prosecution. Over the course of seven years, he brought in close to $2 million from the firm, and he concealed about $350,000 of that revenue, or about $700,000, from the IRS. He utilized that money for things like golf club dues, auto payments, tuition for private schools, and costs associated with his second Cape Cod house.

Tuesday will see the sentencing of Robertson, the other trooper implicated in the plot.

Nine Boston police officers, a Boston police captain, and the former president of the Boston Police Union were among the several police officers in Massachusetts who were charged with overtime fraud.