When Off-Duty Police Program Oversight Is Lacking, Fraud Fills the Gap

A captain and a trooper from a state highway patrol agency were arrested and charged with grand theft, fraud, and falsifying an official document. Both had been working off-duty security at Champions Gate, a private resort and golf community that regularly hires off-duty law enforcement to patrol the area.

According to the arrest affidavit, neither officer was paid through their agency. Instead, both were paid directly through companies they had formed themselves. State records confirm one officer’s company belongs solely to her. The other officer was paid through a separate LLC he created in 2023.

The agency’s internal oversight office opened an investigation in April after questions arose about the arrangement. What investigators found was straightforward: the two officers billed Champions Gate for days they never showed up to work.

Both officers have since been terminated. Sources tell News 6 the investigation could expand to other troopers with similar off-duty arrangements.

The detail that matters most here isn’t the fraud itself. It’s how the payment structure made the fraud possible in the first place.

Some law enforcement agencies route pay for off-duty employment through a centralized system. The agency, or a third-party administrator, collects payment from the business requesting coverage, verifies the hours worked, and distributes pay to the officer. Orlando Police Department’s website directs off-duty payment submissions through our company, Off Duty Management. Orange County Sheriff’s Office follows the same model.

Unfortunately, many agencies don’t work this way.  Off-duty arrangements often go directly through the officer. Some officers receive cash or checks made out to them. Others, like the two officers in this case, form their own LLCs to limit liability and collect payment directly from the businesses that hire them, with no agency in between to verify the hours actually worked or to account for taxes that should be collected

That’s the loophole. When an officer accepts a job and invoices the business directly, the business pays without a third party confirming the officer actually worked the entire shift. There’s nothing in the system to catch a discrepancy until someone goes looking for one.

News 6 asked the agency why troopers are tasked with forming their own companies, and whether enough oversight exists for off-duty work. As of publication, the agency had not responded.

It’s tempting to read this as an isolated lapse at one agency. It isn’t, and it isn’t just a police department problem. Any off-duty program built around direct, unverified payment between an officer and a private business carries the same exposure, regardless of which agency runs it.

Off-duty work exists because businesses, HOAs, resorts, and event venues want a visible law enforcement presence, and off-duty jobs can provide officers with extra income while still requiring real oversight. That arrangement only holds up if every shift is logged, every hour is verified against an actual schedule with GPS tracking, and every payment runs through a system that isn’t solely dependent on the officer’s own verification.

Without that structure, an agency is trusting the honor system for a process that involves real money changing hands. Most officers won’t abuse that trust. But a program is only as strong as its weakest control, and “we trust our people” isn’t a control. It’s a hope.

A solution built to prevent this kind of fraud needs a few non-negotiables:

Centralized billing. Payment should flow through one system, not directly between the officer and the business. If the agency or its off-duty administrator isn’t the one collecting and distributing funds, there’s no independent check on what’s being billed.

Verified scheduling. Every shift should be tied to a confirmed schedule that both the business and the agency can see, not just an invoice submitted after the fact.

Hour-by-hour accountability. Hours worked should be verified with GPS and compared to hours billed, with discrepancies flagged automatically rather than discovered months later in an internal affairs investigation.

No side arrangements. If officers are forming their own companies to get paid for off-duty work, that’s a sign the program itself has a structural gap, not just an individual integrity problem.

These aren’t abstract best practices. They’re the difference between a program that can produce a clean audit trail in five minutes and one that finds out about a problem only after a tip, a complaint, or a reporter starts asking questions.

This case isn’t an outlier. A Police1 analysis by retired police chief Joel Shults found similar timecard and overtime fraud cases surfacing across the country, from

departments in Florida and Massachusetts to Maryland, Louisiana, and California. The cases differ in detail, but they share the same root cause: pay tied to hours that nobody independently verified. Agencies need systems that are defensible, auditable, and consistently enforced. That’s the standard every off-duty program should be held to, and it’s exactly what we built Off Duty Management to deliver.

This is exactly the structure Off Duty Management was built around. Every shift is scheduled and verified before it happens. Every hour worked is tracked against that schedule and verified with GPS. Every payment for off-duty employment runs through one centralized system, not a side arrangement between an officer and a business.

There are no checks written directly to officers. No LLCs standing in for agency oversight. No blind spots where billed hours and worked hours quietly drift apart. Off Duty Management works alongside agencies to keep that process transparent for everyone involved: the agency, the officer, and the business requesting coverage.

Off-duty work should be a benefit to officers and a service to the community, not a liability waiting to surface in a media headline. Strong oversight is what keeps it that way.

If this story has you wondering how your own program would hold up under the same kind of scrutiny, that’s worth a closer look before someone else forces the question. Schedule an Off-Duty Program Governance Briefing with Off Duty Management and find out where your program stands.

Off Duty Management is not affiliated with the agency or officers described above and encourages agencies to review independent reporting and assess their own program safeguards.