54 California Highway Patrol Officers Busted in Overtime-Fraud Scheme
California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced charges against 54 current and former Highway Patrol officers for overtime fraud. The charged officers are accused of claiming phony overtime hours while patrolling high-occupancy traffic lanes or on assignment protecting workers in construction zones.
According to prosecutors, the overtime-fraud scheme netted the officers over $226,000 between 2016 and mid-2018. Eleven of the charged officer are still employed with the Highway Patrol. They have been placed on administrative leave and have had their peace officer powers revoked. The charged officers were booked by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
The charges are the result of a criminal investigation into the East Los Angeles station. The scheme wasn’t detected “earlier because the supervisors who would have been the ones to report these activities were also committing the fraud,” according to charging documents. In addition, the scheme evaded detection for as long as it did because “the fraud typically took place during the graveyard hours, which was outside of the normal working hours of office managers,” according to media reports.
In a prepared statement, Attorney General Rob Bonta said, “Trust is a critical part of successful law enforcement. These defendants disregarded the law through their alleged actions and did so without thought of how their conduct would impact the California Highway Patrol or the community that trusted them to protect and serve.”
Back in 2019, the Highway Patrol announced that it had temporarily relieved “dozens” of officers from duty as investigations into whether they billed for hundreds of hours of bogus overtime, costing taxpayers approximately $360,000. The Highway Patrol assured the public at the time that changes had been made to overtime practices in response to the alleged fraud scheme.
It seems as though some more changes still need to be made in order to guard against these fraud schemes orchestrated by those entrusted to protect and to serve.
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