Former MA State Police Employees Convicted In Overtime Scheme

FRAMINGHAM, MA — Two former Massachusetts State Police employees working in the Traffic Programs Section at the state's headquarters in Framingham were convicted in relation to an overtime scheme dating back nearly a decade.

Former Lieutenant Daniel J. Griffin and former Sergeant William W. Robertson were convicted by a federal jury in Worcester this week of conspiracy, federal programs fraud and wire fraud in connection with the scheme.

Just before trial, on Nov. 27, Griffin pleaded guilty to four additional counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of filing false tax returns, officials said.

Griffin, 60, of Belmont, and Robertson, 61, of Westborough, were each convicted of one count of conspiracy, one count of theft concerning a federal program and four counts of wire fraud.

U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman scheduled sentencing for March 20, 2024. Griffin and Robertson were both indicted by a federal grand jury in December 2020.

From 2015 through 2018, Griffin, Robertson and other troopers in the Traffic Programs Section at State Police Headquarters in Framingham conspired to steal thousands of dollars in federally funded overtime by regularly arriving late to, and leaving early from, overtime shifts funded by grants intended to improve traffic safety, officials said.

During the conspiracy, Griffin made and approved false entries on forms and other documentation to conceal and perpetuate the fraud, officials said.

When the MSP overtime misconduct came to light in 2017 and 2018, Griffin, Robertson and their co-conspirators avoided detection by shredding and burning records and forms. After an internal inquiry regarding missing forms, Griffin submitted a memo to his superiors designed to mislead them by claiming that missing forms were “inadvertently discarded or misplaced” during office moves, officials said.

Additionally, Griffin spent significant time running his security business, Knight Protection Services, during hours that he was collecting regular MSP pay and overtime pay.

From 2012 to 2019, Griffin collected almost $2 million in KnightPro revenue. Of that total, Griffin hid over $700,000 in revenue from the IRS and used hundreds of thousands of dollars in KnightPro income to fund personal expenses, such as golf club expenses, car payments, private school tuition and expenses related to his second home on Cape Cod.

Prior to yesterday's jury conviction, Griffin pleaded guilty on Nov. 27, 2023, to defrauding a private school attended by two of his children from at least 2016 to 2019 by concealing his KnightPro income and filing materially misleading financial aid applications, which understated his income and assets by hundreds of thousands of dollars, officials said.

Despite Griffin’s lucrative MSP salary and KnightPro business, Griffin obtained over $175,000 in financial aid from the private school over several years.

For all charges, prison time could end up close to 40 years, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office.