A Hanover man who worked as a captain in the Boston Police Department was sentenced to federal prison on Thursday for his role in a long-running overtime fraud scheme at the department‘s evidence warehouse, acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua S. Levy’s office announced.
Richard Evans, 65, will serve one year and one day in prison followed by two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay restitution totaling $154,249.20 and a $15,000 fine. In March, a jury convicted Evans of conspiracy to commit theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, theft concerning programs receiving federal funds, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.
Evans was arrested and charged in March 2021 after what Levy’s office described as a “lengthy investigation into the overtime practices of Evans and other BPD officers” that proved they had been falsifying overtime slips so they could get paid overtime they did not work.
Between May 2012 and March 2016, Evans served as the commander of the department’s Evidence Control Unit, where he oversaw storing, cataloging and retrieving evidence at the warehouse. One of the highest-ranking officers in the department, Evans was a 37-year veteran of the force.
When the evidence warehouse began to fill up with evidence, Boston Police authorized an overtime program to “purge” old and unndeeded evidence from the warehouse. The program allowed officers in the Evidence Control unit to work up to four hours of overtime a day to purge old evidence.
But for almost the entire time Evans oversaw the unit, he and others abused the overtime program, Levy’s office said. Officers were supposed to work a “purge” shift from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. four days a week, but members of the unit often worked only an hour or two.
On “countless occasions” over multiple years, Evans and other officers submitted overtime slips falsely overstating the number of hours they worked, Levy‘s office said. The department‘s evidence warehouse is secured and alarmed when officers are not working in it. Alarm records showed the building was not open during hundreds of hours where Evans and others claimed to have been working, Levy’s office said.
In addition to falsifying his own overtime slips, Evans, as a supervisor, approved the falsified overtime slips of officers who worked under him. He also misled his superiors about the overtime scheme to cover it up, Levy’s office said.
In his three-and-a-half years supervising the evidence unit, Evans was paid more than $120,000 in overtime payments on top of his salary, which at times exceeded $200,000, Levy’s office said. Evans earned more than $17,000 for purported overtime work when the warehouse was actually closed.
“Members of law enforcement are expected to uphold the law, not violate it,” said Levy in the statement. “Mr. Evans abused the public trust and violated his oath, and his greed corrupted others in the department. His actions do not reflect the selfless, outstanding work done every day by thousands of Boston Police Department officers and police officers across the Commonwealth.”
Special Agent in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Boston Division Jodi Cohen added that after decades on the force Evans, “should know that crime doesn’t pay.”
