From the Office of the Attorney General (OAG):

“Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb today announced that warrants were signed seeking the arrest of six members of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) for falsifying overtime claims by forging supervisory approvals and manipulating official overtime records, resulting in the District paying them $441,137 for work they did not perform. An investigation into this fraud scheme was opened after MPD’s Internal Affairs Division identified irregularities in overtime submissions, including unusually high volumes of claimed overtime hours and inconsistencies between claimed work activity and independent verification data.

Given the limited criminal jurisdiction of the D.C government under the Home Rule Act, prosecutions of adult felonies such as this are handled by the federal government, through the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia (USAO). The Office of the Attorney General (OAG), however, is committed to protecting District resident’s tax dollars and ensuring that DC public officials who abuse their positions of power face consequences and are held accountable for breaches of the public trust. As a result, OAG has entered into a partnership with USAO through which OAG attorneys are detailed to USAO, serving as Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys (SAUSAs) to prosecute local fraud and public corruption cases.

“These six officers abused their positions of power, exploiting the District and the residents they took an oath to serve and protect. No one is above the law, especially those trusted with enforcing it,” said Attorney General Schwalb. “While the Home Rule Act does not grant my office the jurisdiction to directly prosecute these cases, through our partnership with the USAO, we are able to protect taxpayer dollars and root out local public corruption. I encourage DC residents to report suspected public corruption to my office.”

The MPD members involved and the amounts they fraudulently received are: (more…)