Four New Orleans levee police officers arrested, suspected of payroll fraud
New Orleans LA. October 6 2022 Four Orleans Levee District police officers were arrested this week over allegations of payroll fraud, court records show.
The four officers are accused of cutting out on recent off-duty security shifts in the Lake Vista subdivision or at the New Orleans Yacht Club, then billing for the ghost work.
Sgt. Noel Sanders, 51, was booked on suspicion of public payroll fraud, theft under $1,000, and malfeasance in office. He’s accused of billing for three detail shifts at the yacht club though he was at home.
Joynal Abdin, 44, was booked on the same charges, accused of showing up but then quickly leaving paid detail shifts at Lake Vista last month. Also arrested were officers Benjamin Wilson, 43, and Jerald Holmes, 33.
The criminal counts they face involve relatively small sums, averaging a few hundred dollars in alleged ill-gotten pay, based on an investigation that involved surveillance and crime cameras. It found the officers far from the job during several paid security shifts last month, according to arrest reports.
A spokesperson for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East confirmed the arrests on Wednesday.
“We are cooperating fully with the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office in this matter,” the district said in a statement. “Any levee district officer implicated in criminal wrongdoing will be suspended from duty pending investigation and subsequent determination of the appropriate disciplinary action.”
The district declined to say whether the officers were suspended with or without pay.
The arrests follow similar allegations against dozens of New Orleans Police Department officers that have sparked a federal probe into the timesheets of at least 11 city cops.
Several of those high-earning NOPD officers are accused of overlapping on-duty and moonlighting shifts.
That scandal exposed a gap in city and NOPD payroll systems that allowed cops to double dip without being flagged.
Sanders, Abdin and Wilson were released Tuesday on their own recognizance. Magistrate Commissioner Dennis Moore set bail for Holmes at $16,500.
Holmes, a police investigator, was allegedly caught billing $1,400 in phony security work, the most of the four accused cops, court records show.
All four officers have served less than six years on the force, authority records show.
