54 California Highway Patrol Officers Charged With Overtime Fraud

Over 50 current and former Highway Patrol officers have been charged with receiving more than $226,000 in fraudulent overtime hours in a scheme, according to California's attorney general.

The Associated Press reports that the charges were announced Thursday, February 17, and stem from a criminal investigation of officers working for the East Los Angeles station. According to prosecutors, from 2016 to mid-2018, a total of 54 officers recorded phony overtime hours while patrolling high-occupancy traffic lanes or providing protection to state transportation workers in construction zones.

Charges were filed earlier this month and officers were booked by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department this week.

“The alleged offenses were not discovered earlier because the supervisors who would have been the ones to report these activities were also committing the fraud,” according to a felony complaint against two of the officers. “Moreover, the fraud typically took place during graveyard hours, which was outside of the normal working hours of office managers.”

According to the highway patrol, 11 of the 54 officers are still employed by the agency. Those still with the agency and are under investigation by the Department of Justice have been placed on administrative time off and had their peace officer powers removed, according to department spokesman Officer Jose Barrios.

“As a professional law enforcement agency which holds it employees to the highest of standards, the CHP takes all allegations of misconduct seriously,” said Barrios in a statement. “The CHP uncovered the overtime fraud in the East Los Angeles area several years ago during an internal examination.”

In early 2019, highway patrol said they temporarily relived "dozens" of officers from duty while it investigated whether they had billed the state for hundreds of bogus overtime hours costing around $360,000.