McALLEN, Texas – A retired Texas border police chief is expected to turn himself in to authorities on federal charges accusing him of stealing money from a federal border-enforcement grant.
Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigations have charged former Rio Grande City Police Chief Byron Dutch Piper with theft of a program that received federal funds, court records obtained by Breitbart Texas revealed.
Piper served as the police chief in the border city of Rio Grande from March 2005 to December 2014 when he retired.
According to the court records, from 2009 to 2014 RGCPD received money from a federal grant called Stone Garden, which provided funds to border police departments to work overtime hours securing the border.
In October 2014, the FBI received information that Piper collected grant money for details that he didn’t work. In December, the FBI set up a surveillance operation and spotted Piper doing personal errands, eating at a local restaurant, and staying at home when in government records he supposedly worked border security operations.
In January and in February, Piper met with FBI agents in McAllen, where he admitted to submitting the false time cards. In the February meeting, Piper signed a written confession: “In Reference to the Stone Garden project, I did not work seventy percent of the time, as I wrote on my time sheet.… I did it out of laziness and stupidity.”
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