Washington, D.C. The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service are each offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest of Roy McGrath. McGrath is the former chief of staff to the former governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan. He has been on the run since this month when he didn’t show up to his trial on charges of wire fraud and embezzlement.
Since McGrath, 53, didn’t show up in federal court in Baltimore, Maryland, on March 13, the government has been looking for him very hard. A judge issued an arrest warrant for him, and the FBI quickly went to his house in Naples, Florida, and talked to his family.
On Tuesday, the FBI put out a wanted poster with three pictures of McGrath and a list of names he might be using, such as Roy Carlos McGrath, Roy Charles McGrath, Roy Baisliadou, RC Baisliadou, Roy Mak-Grath, RC Mak-Grath, and RC McGrath.
The Marshals said that McGrath gave up his passport after he was arrested, but the FBI said that McGrath should still be thought of as an “international flight risk.”
Joseph Murtha, McGrath’s lawyer, told the Associated Press that he had talked to McGrath about the case a few days before he didn’t show up in court. “This is so different from how he usually acts,” Murtha told the AP.
McGrath was set to go to trial on federal charges from when he was in charge of the Maryland Environmental Service, which is a quasi-government state agency that does things like manage wastewater, compost, and recycle.
Prosecutors said McGrath got a $233,647 severance payment through fraud when he left his job in 2020 to become Hogan’s chief of staff. They also said he made up a document that said the governor had approved the payment. He was also accused of lying on his time sheets while he was on vacation in Europe and stealing money to pay for his Harvard classes.
McGrath was charged with federal crimes for the first time in October 2021, but he pleaded not guilty. If he was found guilty on all counts, he could have gone to prison for more than 100 years.
