Former Massachusetts State Police Troopers Convicted of Conspiring to Steal Overtime Funds and Wire Fraud

BOSTON – Former Massachusetts State Police (MSP) Lieutenant Daniel J. Griffin and former MSP Sergeant William W. Robertson were convicted by a federal jury in Worcester yesterday of conspiracy, federal programs fraud and wire fraud in connection with an overtime scheme dating back to 2015. Just prior to trial, on Nov. 27, 2023, Griffin pleaded guilty to four additional counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of filing false tax returns.

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. The defendants were 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. During the course of the conspiracy, Griffin made and approved false entries on forms and other documentation to conceal and perpetuate the fraud. 

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

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

The charge of wire fraud provides for a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of federal program fraud provides for a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of conspiracy provides for a sentence of up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a fine of $250,000. The charge of filing false tax returns provides for a sentence of up to three years in prison, one year of supervised release and a fine of $100,000.  Sentences are imposed by a federal district court judge based upon the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and statutes which govern the determination of a sentence in a criminal case.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts; Christopher A. Scharf, Special Agent in Charge, U.S. Department of Transportation Office of Inspector General, Northeast Region; Jodi Cohen, Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division; and Harry Chavis, Jr., Special Agent in Charge of the Internal Revenue Service’s Criminal Investigations in Boston made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Dustin Chao and Adam Deitch of the Public Corruption Unit are prosecuting the case.