Six MPD officers charged in a $441,000 overtime fraud that went undetected for years

Why this hits home

Your Metropolitan Police Department tax dollars - the ones that fund patrol cars, body cameras, and the paychecks of officers who respond when you call 911 - were paying for shifts that never happened. According to D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb, five officers and one civilian employee in MPD's Fifth District administrative office spent years forging supervisory signatures, manipulating timesheets, and collecting overtime pay for hours they simply were not working. The total: $441,137. All of it in 2024 alone.

The charges, announced in mid-August 2026, carry consequences beyond the dollar figure. These are people with the power to stop, arrest, and detain D.C. residents. The allegation that they were simultaneously cheating the city's payroll system - sometimes while traveling out of the country - cuts at something residents are already on edge about: whether the department holds its own accountable the way it holds everyone else.

What prosecutors say happened

Schwalb announced that warrants were signed seeking the arrest of six members of the Metropolitan Police Department 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 the 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.

The defendants were all assigned to the Fifth District Administrative Office. Methods allegedly included claiming overtime while physically outside the District of Columbia - including during domestic and international travel - while on annual leave, forging supervisory signatures on authorization forms, and using administrative positions to facilitate fraudulent processing and approvals. Some also allegedly claimed compensation while engaged in secondary employment.

The six individuals and what prosecutors say they pocketed:

• Former Sgt. Frantz Fulcher - $174,915.39
• Officer Thomas Krmenec - $89,478.00
• Officer Dorrie Smith-Cleere - $87,397.65
• Former Senior Police Officer Bernadette Richardson - $43,351.68
• Civilian employee Johnnie Dyer - $27,721.59
• Former Lt. Peter Sheldon - $18,272.72

They are charged with first-degree fraud, first-degree theft, forgery, and uttering - uttering being the act of knowingly passing a forged document as legitimate.

Investigators reportedly combed through bodycam footage, cell data, toll records, and emails to pin down which claimed hours were falsified. The paper trail was not subtle. Fulcher alone - a former sergeant, someone authorized to sign off on subordinates' own overtime - is accused of taking the largest share by far, with $174,915.39 in unearned overtime pay tied to his name.

As of Tuesday afternoon after the announcement, a source told ABC affiliate WJLA that at least three of the six - Officers Smith-Cleere and Krmenec, and former Senior Police Officer Richardson - were in custody; warrants for Fulcher and Sheldon were executed Wednesday, according to court documents.

The Home Rule wrinkle

There is a structural oddity baked into every major public-corruption case in D.C., and this one is no different. Given the limited criminal jurisdiction of the D.C. government under the Home Rule Act, prosecutions of adult felonies are handled by the federal government, through the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Schwalb's office worked around that constraint the same way it has before. Because the D.C. Home Rule Act limits local government jurisdiction over adult felony prosecutions, Schwalb's office assigned attorneys to the U.S. Attorney's Office as Special Assistant U.S. Attorneys to prosecute public corruption cases through that office. Jeremy Morris, chief of the Fraud and Public Corruption Section in Schwalb's office, is prosecuting the MPD case while serving in that federal role.

It is the same arrangement used in a previous MPD time-and-attendance case. In May 2023, former officer and D.C. Police Union Vice Chairman Medgar Webster Sr. was prosecuted through the same channel - a precedent that suggests the OAG-USAO partnership has become the de facto pipeline for local police accountability that D.C.'s limited home-rule powers cannot otherwise provide.

'No one is above the law, especially those trusted with enforcing it,' Schwalb said. '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.'

The auditor says the system failed first

Schwalb's charges are the headline. But D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson's reaction may matter more in the long run. Overtime pay at MPD had been a discussion point long before this investigation. Patterson told 7News the amount of money uncovered should have been flagged before the payments were issued.

That's a direct challenge to MPD's internal financial controls - not just to the six individuals charged. If $441,137 in suspicious overtime could flow out of the department for an entire year before Internal Affairs noticed, the question isn't only who cheated. It's what prevented the system from catching it sooner.

Patterson has been auditing MPD overtime practices for years. Her office has previously flagged the department's overtime spending as chronically high and difficult to track. The Fifth District administrative office, where all six defendants worked, handles scheduling and record-keeping - exactly the kind of back-office position that, according to prosecutors, made it easier to manipulate the Timesheet Manager Application without immediate detection.

This is not an isolated case - analysis

Context matters here. This is the second significant MPD time-and-attendance fraud case to result in criminal charges in three years. The first - the Webster case in 2023 - involved the department's own union leadership. This one involves a sergeant, a lieutenant, a senior officer, and a civilian clerk, all in the same district office.

That pattern is notable. Analysts and oversight advocates have long argued that MPD's overtime budget - which regularly runs tens of millions of dollars annually above projections - creates an environment where misuse is both tempting and structurally possible. The department has historically approved overtime with limited real-time verification, relying instead on supervisor sign-off. When supervisors are themselves among those signing fraudulent forms, the system has no obvious backstop.

Among the methods the defendants allegedly used were claiming overtime while outside of the District - including while traveling - and while on leave. Cell data and toll records, prosecutors say, placed some of them nowhere near their claimed work locations.

For Mayor-elect Janeese Lewis George, who takes office in January, the case lands at an inconvenient moment. She has made public safety a centerpiece of her campaign and transition planning. An incoming administration inheriting a police department where six employees in a single office collectively falsified more than 5,600 hours of work - prosecutors say the six manipulated overtime records and collected pay for 5,618 hours they did not work - will face immediate pressure to show what systemic reforms, beyond prosecutions, will actually change.

When reached for comment, MPD's Office of Communications declined, citing the ongoing investigation. 'We are unable to provide further details at this time,' MPD told Washington City Paper.

What D.C. Residents Should Watch

The evidentiary hearings and plea negotiations. First-degree fraud and first-degree theft in D.C. carry serious sentencing exposure. Watch whether any of the six defendants cooperate with prosecutors and whether that leads to additional charges against others in the department.

The D.C. Auditor's next move. Kathy Patterson said the money should have been flagged before it went out. Her office has the authority to audit MPD's overtime controls more broadly. Whether she launches a formal audit of the Fifth District - or the department's timesheet approval system districtwide - will signal how seriously city government is treating the structural failure here, not just the individual misconduct.

MPD's internal review. The department said it cannot comment on the ongoing investigation. That answer will have a shelf life. Once criminal proceedings are underway, expect the D.C. Council's Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety - currently chaired by Brooke Pinto - to call MPD leadership for an accounting of how oversight broke down.

The incoming Lewis George administration. She has not yet commented publicly on the charges. Her first police-related personnel and policy decisions as mayor will be read against this backdrop - specifically whether she moves to reform MPD's overtime approval process or leaves the existing system in place.

Former Sgt. Frantz Fulcher, who prosecutors say collected nearly $175,000 in fraudulent pay - almost 40 percent of the total - had not entered a plea as of the most recent public court records available. His case is assigned to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Sources: Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia | NBC4 Washington | WTOP News | WJLA | Washington City Paper | Washington Informer | Hoodline

Claim status: all dollar figures, defendant names, charges, and quotes are verified and attributed to named primary sources. The auditor commentary is attributed. Analysis of systemic oversight failure is labeled as analysis.