Leader of State Police overtime fraud ring sentenced to five years in federal prison

60-year-old Daniel Griffin of Belmont was convicted in December of one count of conspiracy, theft concerning a federal program, and four counts of wire fraud in federal court.

A former Massachusetts State Police lieutenant will spend five years in prison and pay more than half a million dollars in connection to his role in an overtime pay fraud scheme, where he destroyed evidence, misled his superiors, and approved false records, officials said.

Daniel Griffin, 60, of Belmont, was convicted in December of one count of conspiracy, theft concerning a federal program, and four counts of wire fraud, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Massachusetts, said Friday.

Griffin was sentenced Friday to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and restitution, fine, and special assessment fees amounting to about $508,000 by U.S. District Court Judge Margart R. Guzman.

He previously pleaded guilty to four more counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of filing false tax returns when he defrauded a private school that his children attended. While concealing lucrative income from a private security business, he received $175,000 in financial aid from the school over several years, prosecutors said.

Griffin led overtime fraud ring from 2015 to 2018

Griffin, with his co-conspirator Sgt. William Robertson, were arrested and charged back in 2020 in connection with the fraud scheme involving multiple state troopers at the Traffic Programs Section at MSP headquarters in Framingham. Prosecutors said they conspired to leave early and come late to their overtime shifts, scamming thousands of dollars from a federal grant to improve traffic safety.

During some of the shifts, the troopers were supposed to be monitoring sobriety checkpoints to stop drivers potentially under the influence, the Associated Press reported in 2020.

Griffin created and approved false entries on forms, prosecutors said, which occurred from 2015 to 2018. When the scheme was nearing discovery in 2017 and 2018, Griffin, Robertson, and other troopers shredded and burned records, prosecutors said.

Griffin told his superiors the forms were “inadvertently discarded or misplaced” while moving offices, according to the U.S. Attorney.

Griffin also faced charges regarding a separate scheme to mislead his children’s private school by concealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in income from his security business, prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said that while he ran his business Knight Protection, Griffin received state pay and overtime pay. He earned nearly $2 million in revenue from the business over seven years and hid 35% of his income, around $700,000, from the IRS — which he used for golf club expenses, car payments, private school tuition, and for expenses related to his second home on Cape Cod.

Robertson, the other trooper charged in the scheme, will be sentenced Tuesday.

Multiple police officers in Massachusetts faced charges related to overtime fraud, including the former Boston police union president, nine Boston police officers, and a Boston police captain.