LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has dismissed felony wage theft and fraud charges against 48 Highway Patrol Officers who were accused in an additional time fraud scheme.
The Sacramento Bee reports the dismissals last Thursday ended a lot of the criminal cases against 54 CHP officers in East Los Angeles who were suspected of fraudulently obtaining pay for unworked additional time on Caltrans protective details in the world.
LA County Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen last month said he would cut back the felonies to misdemeanors after which dismiss them if the officers agreed to pay back the cash the CHP accused them of improperly receiving. The deal didn’t require the officers to confess guilt.
Fifty-two officers took the deal, and 48 of them had satisfied its conditions in time for the costs to be dismissed Thursday, in line with the Bee.
Two rejected the deal, and a preliminary hearing will probably be scheduled for them in February, in line with state Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office.
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“Over our objection, the judge offered to scale back the felonies and permit the officers to finish a misdemeanor diversion program by paying restitution,” the attorney general’s office said in an email to the Bee.
The CHP announced in 2019 that it had identified about $360,000 in fraudulent additional time pay on the East LA station through an investigation begun a yr earlier. Chief Mark Garrett called the station’s additional time practices “abhorrent” and anomalistic among the many department’s 103 offices across the state.
The highway patrol didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from the newspaper.
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