Former Massachusetts State Police Lieutenant Sentenced to Five Years in Prison for Fraudulent Overtime Scheme Publisher: U.S. Attorney's Office, District of Massachusetts Dateline: Boston, Massachusetts Date: 26 April 2024 Subjects: American Government , Crime

Defendant ordered records burned or shredded and told Troopers to cover up fraud

BOSTON – Former Massachusetts State Police (MSP) Lieutenant Daniel J. Griffin was sentenced today in connection with an overtime scheme dating back to 2015. 

Daniel Griffin, 60, of Belmont, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman to five years in prison and three years of supervised release. Griffin was also ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $329,163, a fine in the amount of $176,700, as well as a $2,100 special assessment. In December 2023, Griffin was convicted of one count of conspiracy, one count of theft concerning a federal program and four counts of wire fraud. 

Prior to trial, in November 2023, Griffin pleaded guilty to four additional counts of wire fraud and 11 counts of filing false tax returns in connection with defrauding a private school attended by two of his children from at least 2016 to 2019 by concealing his income and filing materially misleading financial aid applications.

Co-conspirator MSP Sergeant William W. Robertson was convicted of one count of conspiracy, one count of theft concerning a federal program and four counts of wire fraud. Robertson is scheduled to be sentenced on April 30, 2024.

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.   

In November 2023, Griffin pleaded guilty 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 United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Massachusetts; Christopher A. Scharf, Special Agent-in-Charge, 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 Criminal Investigation, Boston Field Office made the announcement today. Assistant U.S. Attorney Dustin Chao, Chief of the Public Corruption Unit and Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Deitch of the Public Corruption Unit prosecuted the case.

Updated April 26, 2024