Kissimmee police fire officer charged last year with grand theft
A Kissimmee police officer accused of stealing thousands of dollars from the agency in a scheme falsifying his work hours was fired by the agency earlier this year, according to internal documents.
Plenio Massiah, charged with two counts of grand theft and scheming to defraud, surrendered to authorities in October after a criminal investigation found he billed the Kissimmee Police Department nearly $7,000 for 164 hours of off-duty security work he never performed.
Massiah, hired in 2017, was fired in March, records obtained Friday show. His court case was referred to a pretrial diversion program, according to court records.
Investigators began looking into Massiah’s off-duty work in July after a complaint was filed against him, accusing him of showing up late to a security detail in the Stonefield neighborhood, a gated community, an internal report said. After a review of his other documented shifts, the investigation found dozens of instances where he’s alleged to have falsified work hours, including 29 off-duty details “completely unworked yet billed as worked” from January 2022 to July that year.
In total, 59 of the 80 off-duty shifts he signed up for in that period were fraudulently billed, the investigation found.
Sgt. Charles Popp, who led the criminal investigation, further found Massiah “fabricated activity logs by making up traffic stops, citizen contacts and patrols that never occurred when he was not even physically present at the special detail,” the report said.
In one instance, his found was in California at the time he was scheduled to work in Kissimmee.
Few details were released when Massiah was arrested, other than a KPD spokesperson saying investigators were “unable to locate evidence” for the hours he claimed to work. According to internal documents, Massiah, who was hired in 2017, was fired in March for the fraud scheme and insubordination after refusing to answer questions about his behavior, among other policy violations.
“Your actions adversely affected the discipline, good order and reputation of the Kissimmee Police Department,” then-Chief Jeff O’Dell wrote in a memo to Massiah. “Based on the information presented, I have determined it to be impossible for you to fulfill your obligations as a Kissimmee Police Officer.”
Before his criminal case, Massiah was a subject of an internal investigation in 2019 after he was ordered by a sergeant to push a suspect off the roof of a house following a chase. Massiah received an eight-hour suspension for that incident, while the sergeant, Anthony Amada, resigned before he could be fired.
Amada, who was facing a separate accusation of excessive force, also had his law enforcement license suspended, according to a Florida Department of Law Enforcement database.