{"id":313848,"date":"2026-06-20T04:10:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:10:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/313848\/"},"modified":"2026-06-20T04:10:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T04:10:19","slug":"arrested-and-fired-florida-highway-patrol-troopers-accused-of-faking-off-duty-shifts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/313848\/","title":{"rendered":"Arrested and fired Florida Highway Patrol troopers accused of faking off-duty shifts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The two former Florida Highway Patrol troopers fired this week after being charged with fraud are accused of overbilling thousands of dollars in faked off-duty shifts at ChampionsGate, court records allege \u2014 including when one of them was out of the country.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Capt. Lenita King, 63, and Trooper Maurice Vilsaint, 43, were arrested Wednesday on charges stemming from the alleged scheme, which came to light following an investigation earlier this year by the Office of Inspector General at the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Both were released on bond from of the Osceola County Jail shortly after surrendering to authorities there on charges of grand theft, defrauding to obtain property, falsifying public records and falsifying official documents as public servants.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In both cases, according to affidavits filed in Osceola County court, they are accused of defrauding the ChampionsGate Community Development District, which hired them to provide law enforcement services and paid them through their personal corporations.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">\u201cThe ChampionsGate CDD is not providing any comment on this matter,\u201d a spokesperson said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Vilsaint, who worked at FHP for 18 years and was tasked with commercial vehicle enforcement at the district, is accused of collecting $12,220 in payments over 48 unworked days between October and March, with an additional $3,120 billed for 12 days in April that he didn\u2019t receive.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">The affidavit filed in Vilsaint\u2019s case claims he was initially reported to investigators on Feb. 5. Although records don\u2019t mention falsified shifts prior to Oct. 1, the investigation of his shifts from June 2025 to April 2026 found discrepancies in reports filed while billing the district compared to others submitted to FHP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Investigators claim he turned off his vehicle\u2019s GPS tracker on multiple days in question, \u201cwhich precluded the OIG the ability to confirm\u201d his true whereabouts when he claimed to be working. On some of the days it was turned on, however, investigators said his tracker confirmed he never drove to ChampionsGate on several of the days for which he was later paid.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">Additionally, investigators found he billed the district for hours in which he was working for FHP, \u201cand on several occasions [when] he was out of the United States on international travel,\u201d the affidavit said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">In King\u2019s case, the 22-year veteran at FHP was discovered to have falsely charged nine days of off-duty work at ChampionsGate totaling $3,517, including $1,753 in April that went unpaid \u201cdue to their knowledge of King\u2019s fraud,\u201d according to the affidavit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">That investigation centered on her activity from March to April, using a covert tracker installed on her car along with reports she filed within that period. While she filed detailed reports of her activity on the days she actually worked, including having issued a traffic citation and four traffic warnings, \u201cKing did not report any activity during the nine days she did not\u201d work in ChampionsGate, the affidavit said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mb-4 text-lg md:leading-8 break-words\">King, who oversaw District 2 in the Orlando-based Troop D, and Vilsaint were fired following their arrests. No court dates have yet been scheduled in their cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two former Florida Highway Patrol troopers fired this week after being charged with fraud are accused of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[130635,130638,130639,1056,28,36456,30,618,29,130637,130636,130640],"class_list":["post-313848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-championsgate","tag-championsgate-community-development-district","tag-commercial-vehicle-enforcement","tag-fhp","tag-florida","tag-florida-department-of-highway-safety-and-motor-vehicles","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-highway-patrol","tag-florida-news","tag-lenita-king","tag-maurice-vilsaint","tag-public-servants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}