Feds want 6-year prison term for 'poster boy' of Mass. State Police corruption

WORCESTER ― Federal prosecutors are seeking a 71-month prison sentence for a state police lieutenant convicted in December of a three-year overtime scheme, calling him the “poster boy” of state police corruption.

In a sentencing memorandum filed in U.S. District Court in Worcester, prosecutors said the crimes of Daniel J. Griffin — who was convicted of multiple felonies, including overtime theft, in December — eclipse those of State Police Troop E, which was disbanded in 2018 after rampant overtime theft among dozens of troopers came to light.

The feds, who prosecuted many of those troopers, wrote that the sentences judges handed down in their cases show the need for stiffer punishment for Griffin.

“If Troop E provides us with sentencing guidance, it informs us that none of the Troop E sentences adequately promoted respect for the law or sufficiently served those other goals,” prosecutors for Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua S. Levy wrote, noting that, by the time state police began probing Griffin's small-traffic unit in August 2019, most of the Troop E sentences had already been levied.

“By November 2019, the State Police internal affairs investigation of Griffin completely exonerated him of any wrongdoing,” they wrote. “Despite multiple Troopers being arrested, pleading guilty and being sentenced for overtime fraud from 2018 to 2019, the State Police absolved Griffin, its most prolific offender to date, in a matter of four months."

State police spokesman David Procopio, in emails to the Telegram & Gazette, disputed prosecutors' statement that Griffin had been exonerated, calling it "inaccurate."

Procopio said the internal affairs case opened against Griffin is "open," and that there "has been no finding" yet.

"As a matter of course, IA investigations that run parallel to criminal proceedings remain open until the completion of the criminal judicial process, as information and evidence that result from criminal prosecutions are considered during the Internal Affairs investigation and subsequent disciplinary process," he wrote.

Informed of Procopio's statement, Christina DiIorio-Sterling, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, wrote in an email Friday: "We stand by the information relied upon for our sentencing memorandum.”

The T&G on Friday requested copies of Griffin's internal affairs record from both the U.S. Attorney's Office and the state police.

Griffin, 60, was convicted in December of multiple felonies tied to allegations he orchestrated the theft of more than $130,000 in federal grant funds, hid $700,000 in income from the IRS and fraudulently obtained $170,000 in financial aid from his kids’ private school. He is set to be sentenced April 26.

Jurors found that Griffin and a handful of troopers under his command in a special traffic unit stole federal overtime funds by not working many of the hours they said they did on safety campaigns like distracted driving and sobriety checkpoints.

Griffin coordinated with the troopers so all their timesheets aligned, prosecutors said, despite often starting shifts during regular work time and ending hours earlier than they claimed. The fraud collectively amounted to more than $130,000 between 2015 and 2017, they said.

State police last year said internal affairs probes were ongoing into department members potentially implicated in the fraud. One of those troopers, who testified for the prosecution pursuant to an immunity grant, had received nearly $300,000 as of last December while on paid leave since November 2020, state records show.

State records indicate the trooper, Timothy Weldon, has not been paid anything in 2024. Procopio said Weldon was switched to unpaid leave "based on certain information presented during the criminal proceedings."

The only other trooper prosecutors charged in the case, Sgt. William Robertson, was also convicted in December, and is slated to be sentenced after Griffin. Robertson, prosecutors alleged, ordered another trooper from the unit to destroy records pertaining to the fraud.

Prosecutors Adam Deitch and Dustin Chao, the latter of whom heads Levy’s public corruption unit, excoriated Griffin and his unit in their sentencing memorandum, referring to it as a “criminal cabal” and a “gang of thieves.”

Griffin’s lawyers, as they did at trial, argued in their memorandum that he is being unfairly prosecuted for doing something — accepting money he didn’t earn — that has been commonplace in state police.

“Even the Superintendent herself had to acknowledge that nearly everyone working at Massachusetts State Police Headquarters left at least one-half hour early every single day — at 3:00 p.m. — five days a week,” they wrote.

They further wrote that one trooper who testified pursuant to immunity “was the very teacher of the defendant, mentoring him concerning all the prosecuted practices,” and noted that another trooper testified colleagues had for decades accepted money they didn’t deserve.

“Traffic Program Section Officers-in-Charge preceding the defendant … remain unscathed,” they wrote, along with many other troopers “long gone from the state police.”

Griffin’s lawyers asked for leniency, noting that most Troop E defendants escaped jail time, with the longest sentence imposed being only several months.

They argued Griffin has been prosecuted with unfair zeal, and that he, by virtue of being a former cop with a knee problem, would be a “sitting duck” for physical abuse or rape in prison.

Prosecutors said Griffin did not deserve leniency, calling him the “poster boy” for corruption at state police who lied whenever it suited his advantage.

They said that, unlike most Troop E defendants, Griffin didn’t accept responsibility by pleading guilty to his overtime theft, and characterized his thefts as longer-lasting and more varied.

The prosecutors conceded that Griffin “may not have invented overtime theft at the State Police” but called him a “quick study … who embraced its practice, mastered its execution, and fostered its cancerous growth within the ranks of the MSP.”

Prosecutors pointed to 2018, a time when Griffin was out injured on duty, as particularly illustrative of his deception.

They entered emails showing that Griffin told someone he took an “odyssey” of a walk and planned on biking while on vacation in Amsterdam, despite his injured status. They also noted that Griffin, who argued in his sentencing memorandum that he contributed much to traffic safety over decades of law enforcement, didn’t apply for federal grants in 2018 for distracted driving patrols.

“When it came to (this) overtime, if Griffin wasn’t getting paid, no one was getting paid,” they wrote. “The Commonwealth was worse off for Griffin’s greed.”

In addition to the theft conviction, Griffin pleaded guilty to concealing $700,000 from the IRS and fraudulently obtaining $170,000 from his children's private school, Belmont Hill School, by understating his income on financial aid forms.

Prosecutors wrote that Griffin had abused the respect of his badge in both instances. His tax preparer questioned figures he was given showing Griffin’s private security firm, KnightPro, was losing money year after year, they said, but ultimately gave Griffin the benefit of the doubt because of his position.

Prosecutors wrote that Griffin’s lies took “multiple forms,” from understating thousands in income to overstating expenses.

“Sometimes it came in the form of Griffin claiming a monthly $150 janitorial expense for KnightPro, which was really a monthly payment to Griffin’s household cleaning lady,” they wrote. “Sometimes it came in the form of Griffin buying and writing off a season package of Red Sox tickets, which Griffin used a portion of tickets for personal use or resold, and, therefore, recouping the costs.”

Prosecutors wrote that Griffin “reaped his criminal rewards” by diverting KnightPro funds to pay for expenses for his Cape house, his Ocean Edge Golf Club membership and his children's private school and college tuitions.

Prosecutors alleged that he, using his state police email, once, in correspondence with the Belmont Hill School, accused others of the same type of fraud he had perpetrated.

“Live above your means, hide your monies and get over your head in debt and you are rewarded,” Griffin wrote, according to a copy of the email included in the filing. He continued to say that he knew of people who were “abusing” the system by making significant cash “under the table.”

Chao said at a court hearing Thursday that Griffin continued to lie to the school even after his indictment, falsely claiming that his “tax/financial aid mess” was the result of his “relying on information from a third party which was obviously incorrect.”

Chao said many of Griffin’s arguments for leniency ring hollow, including a notion that his guilty plea to the tax and financial aid fraud should curry in his favor.

Prosecutors wrote in their memo that Griffin pleaded guilty to those charges only after first offering to plea in exchange for dropping the other charges.

“With his bluff having failed, Griffin folded his Belmont Hill and tax cards within days before the trial,” they wrote. “This is not acceptance. This is trial strategy.”

Griffin was supposed to be sentenced Thursday, but U.S. District Court Judge Margaret R. Guzman delayed the hearing to April 26 to review additional evidence and arguments Griffin submitted.

Guzman made skeptical comments Thursday regarding Griffin’s arguments, and rejected some of them from the bench, including the argument that he deserved some credit for his guilty plea.

The main point of contention remaining is restitution and forfeiture to Belmont Hill.

Griffin argues the government failed to prove Belmont Hill wouldn’t have awarded him aid if his statements had been accurate, while prosecutors argued all the money was ill-gotten since it was obtained by fraud.

In his sentencing memorandum, Griffin noted that he received a letter of support from Jon Biotti, who he said was chairman of the school’s board of trustees, and his lawyers Thursday said Belmont Hill is not seeking restitution.

Biotti’s letter was one of more than 20 appended to court records praising Griffin’s character. Some were attributed to retired state police or law enforcement, and others to family members who said Griffin had gone above and beyond to support both them and strangers in need.

Griffin’s lawyers argued his and his family’s reputations have already been grievously injured, that his once-lucrative private security company is now making essentially nothing, and that Griffin is going to lose a state pension that would have earned him $2.7 million over the next 22 years.

“He and his wife … will be just shy of destitute,” the lawyers wrote, alleging that Griffin’s losses, including anticipated reimbursements to the government over his tax counts, will exceed $4 million.

Griffin, his lawyers wrote, risked his life in his job to protect people, including on the state police bomb squad. He received awards from Mothers Against Drunk Driving and for his work patrolling Logan International Airport with his K-9 dog after 9/11, they said.

“To quote Shakespeare: ‘The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones,'” they wrote.

Prosecutors, in their memo, also appended a famous quotation: John Emerich Edwards’ “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Referring to Griffin as the “poster boy” of state police corruption, they said his crimes — against taxpayers, the IRS and a private school — eclipsed those of Troop E defendants, and justify a 71-month sentence.

“Griffin’s offenses carry a particularly corrosive effect in our society,” they wrote. “By abusing his badge and his public position, Griffin committed crimes that erode the citizenry’s trust in its public officials.”

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Feds want 6-year prison term for Mass. State Police Lt. Daniel Griffin