NEW ORLEANS — A New Orleans Police Department officer was arrested Thursday on hundreds of counts stemming from a payroll fraud scheme that investigators say netted him more than $111,000 in overtime pay for hours he never actually worked.
Senior Police Officer Brandon Coleman, 39, was booked into the Orleans Justice Center on 325 counts of Filing False Public Records, 23 counts of Public Payroll Fraud, one count of Malfeasance in Office, and one count of Theft, according to a joint news release from Louisiana State Police's Criminal Investigations Division and the New Orleans Office of Inspector General. Investigators say the fraudulent claims ran from December 2024 through December 2025.
The joint LSP-OIG investigation opened in April 2026 after reviewing payroll discrepancies between the overtime hours Coleman reported and the hours he actually worked — including cases where his reported work location didn't match where he actually was during claimed overtime periods.
But the state investigation is only the legal endpoint of a story that's been building publicly for nearly a year. Fox 8's "Unchecked Overtime" investigation first exposed Coleman last summer, when undercover surveillance cameras caught him at home multiple times while he was clocked in and drawing taxpayer-funded pay. According to the outlet, Coleman even spotted one of the surveillance cameras outside his house — and kept clocking in anyway. Last year, Coleman's total pay reportedly reached $229,000, more than three times his $68,000 base salary.
Payroll audits obtained by Fox 8 add another layer to the story: Coleman's timesheets showed more than 1,700 separate reviews or edits in 2025, with nearly every one tied to the user ID of another NOPD sergeant. That same sergeant's own timesheet showed more than a thousand edits linked back to Coleman's user ID — meaning the two officers effectively had administrative access to alter each other's recorded hours.
Coleman is not the first NOPD officer swept up in this scandal. Sergeant Henry Burke was arrested in February on four counts of public payroll fraud after the same Fox 8 investigation identified him alongside Coleman as one of the department's two highest overtime earners; Burke was later fired. At least two additional officers have also come under internal investigation as the department's overtime practices have faced wider scrutiny, and the city's Office of Inspector General warned NOPD in April that its payroll practices left the department vulnerable to exactly this kind of fraud.
In the joint release, NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the department "fully cooperated" with the independent investigation and that "accountability and integrity are fundamental to this department." Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said her office will prosecute the case, adding, "We will continue holding public officials accountable for abusing the public's trust." NOLA.com reports Coleman was scheduled to make his first court appearance Friday in Orleans Parish Magistrate Court.
This is a developing story. WECU Media will update as the case moves through court.
Sources:
● Louisiana State Police, Troop NOLA, Official News Release, Aug. 7, 2026
● Fox 8 (WVUE), "Unchecked Overtime: NOPD officer arrested on multiple counts of payroll fraud," Aug. 7, 2026