The Saga of the Nerdy Maryland Bureaucrat Who Died in a Confrontation With the FBI

On Monday, a former Maryland state official named Roy McGrath died after a confrontation with FBI officers who had been making an attempt to apprehend him close to Knoxville, Tennessee. (It’s not clear whether or not McGrath was fatally shot by officers or his personal gun.)

He’d been a fugitive from justice since March 13, when he missed a courtroom look in Baltimore at which he was set to face costs of fraud and theft that centered on a $233,000 severance fee he organized for himself to obtain as he was leaving the Maryland Environmental Service to work as former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief of employees.

It’s an odd story! Let’s focus on.

Who was Roy McGrath?

McGrath, for many of his grownup life, labored on the Nationwide Affiliation of Chain Drug Shops, a D.C.-area trade group, ultimately turning into the group’s vp of enterprise improvement and conventions. He labored on Hogan’s unsuccessful run for Congress in 1992, then turned a part of Hogan’s transition staff when Hogan (a Republican who is comparatively socially liberal and has been essential of Donald Trump) was elected to the Maryland governorship in 2014. After that, he served as Hogan’s deputy chief of employees after which because the director of MES, an impartial state company whose precise features contain issues like sewers and don’t should be mentioned on this article.

None of this screams “future topic of lethal fugitive gunfire” to me.

No. Former colleagues who spoke about McGrath to the Washington Publish described him as “detail-oriented,” “type of awkward,” and, uh, “a enterprise individual.”

So what occurred?

In 2020 Hogan requested McGrath to develop into his chief of employees. In the middle of leaving MES, McGrath requested its board to approve a $233,647 severance payout. Within the phrases of the Baltimore Banner, “Board members later testified underneath oath that they’d reservations about making the payout, however agreed when McGrath led them to imagine that Hogan had given his blessing.” In August 2020, the Baltimore Solar reported on the fee’s existence, and 4 days later, McGrath resigned.

Hogan denied that he had permitted the payout and advised the press that after some information-gathering, he had concluded that it was inappropriate. Being frolicked to dry like this by somebody he’d recognized for a very long time appears to have actually ticked McGrath off. We’ll hear extra about that in a minute.

Uh-oh.

State legislators and regulation enforcement authorities each started investigating McGrath’s departure from MES, and he was charged in October 2021 with having lied to acquire the severance fee, arranging about $40,000 in different inappropriate advantages for himself, and asking to change the minutes of an MES board assembly to cover info. Later, he was additionally charged with fabricating a memo—which he gave to the Washington Publish—purporting to indicate that Hogan had permitted of his compensation by actually placing a blue test mark in a field subsequent to the phrase permitted.

An allegedly fabricated memo test mark? This is a “details-oriented” administrator’s scandal.

Certainly, nevertheless it escalated past the realm of typical white-collar crime this March, when McGrath merely failed to seem in Baltimore for his trial in federal district courtroom. He had been dwelling beforehand (with the approval of the courtroom) in Naples, Florida, however when sheriff’s deputies there checked his home, he was gone.

And he was ultimately present in Tennessee.

Sure, however not earlier than somebody going by the identify “Ryan C. Cooper” self-published two e-books in regards to the state of affairs—Betrayed: The True Story of Roy McGrath and Betrayed: The True Story of Maryland Environmental Service (The True Story of Roy McGrath Ebook 2)—which are obtainable on Amazon. Based on the Baltimore Banner, the primary ebook asserts that McGrath “was politically undermined, attacked, and finally persecuted and prosecuted in a collusion orchestrated by Hogan,” who can be known as “Lyin’ Larry.” The Banner moreover says the ebook “can be filled with petty private complaints and gripes about varied officers within the Hogan administration.” (Not one of the retailers that lined the ebook say it consists of verifiable proof that McGrath was harmless of the crimes for which he was charged. There’s additionally no proof that Hogan, who is usually mentioned as a possible third-party presidential candidate, ever lied about his information of McGrath’s payout.)

Are the books by McGrath?

McGrath had advised the Publish beforehand that he was writing a ebook about his experiences, however the Betrayed titles describe him within the third individual. For what it’s value, a Banner reporter who spoke briefly to a person figuring out himself as “Ryan C. Cooper” wrote that “Cooper” didn’t sound like McGrath on the cellphone. “Cooper” advised the Banner that he was a former Maryland resident dwelling in Florida who had merely taken an curiosity in McGrath’s case and helped him describe his viewpoint.

Did McGrath ever clarify why he turned a fugitive?

Not that we all know of. Neither is it clear whether or not McGrath meant to have interaction with the FBI brokers who tried to arrest him outdoors the purchasing heart the place he was tracked down. Based on the Washington Publish, a “regulation enforcement doc” describing the incident asserts that McGrath is believed to have shot himself through the encounter and that brokers additionally fired on him, nevertheless it’s unclear what weapon precipitated the deadly wound.

So … why did he flip to a lifetime of crime?

Based on a Democratic lawmaker who spoke to the Banner, McGrath’s issues started when he tried to start operating MES like “he was a Fortune 500 CEO, as an alternative of the chief director of part of state authorities.” The bills he’d later be criticized for included funds for journey to areas together with Italy; Tucson, Arizona; and Disney World. Maybe after an extended profession of serving to Larry Hogan and the CEOs of chain drugstores take pleasure in their wildly glamorous (?) existence, Roy McGrath determined that he rattling nicely deserved his flip to stay like a high canine—and that nobody, together with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, was going to cease him.