On May 30, 2025, federal prosecutors announced that former Maryland police officers Michael Anthony Owen, Jaron Earl Taylor and others, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud. 

Owen had previously been charged for second-degree murder of William Green, a defenseless man who he shot while he was handcuffed in his custody in early 2020. Owen was acquitted of charges related to the killing by a jury in 2023.

The long-standing fraud operation demonstrates that the United States law enforcement agencies, far from protecting the population, operate largely as a law unto themselves and represent a clear threat to the working class. 

The federal indictment charged six Maryland police officers from multiple departments, each playing specific roles in the auto insurance and bank fraud schemes. The officers and their respective departments were:

• Michael Anthony Owen Jr. (Prince George’s County Police Department)

• Jaron Earl Taylor (Anne Arundel County Police Department)

• Candace Danielle Tyler (Prince George’s County Police Department)

• Mark Ross Johnson Jr. (Prince George’s County Police Department)

• Conrad Darwin D’Haiti (Maryland-National Capital Park Police)

• Philip James Dupree (Fairmount Heights Police Department)

Sentencing for Owen and Taylor is scheduled for September 23, 2025, with Owen facing up to 20 years and Taylor up to three years in federal prison if the court accepts his plea deal. 

The scheme was elaborate. According to the Department of Justice and detailed in local news reports, between August 2018 and February 2020, participants falsely reported vehicles as stolen or damaged, sometimes even arranging for the vehicles to be set on fire or abandoned. The police officers staged fake car thefts and accidents, submitting fraudulent claims to insurance companies and collecting tens of thousands of dollars in payouts.

Owen and D’Haiti face up to 20 years for conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. Owen also pleaded guilty to falsification of records, while Taylor pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. 

Taylor was also primarily involved in staging the theft of his own Chevrolet Tahoe, filing a false police report, and making a fraudulent insurance claim that led to a $38,670 payout from the United Services Automobile Association. D’Haiti, with Owen’s help, staged the theft and vandalism of his Jaguar XKR, paid Percy $350 to arrange the fake theft, and filed a false claim with Liberty Mutual, resulting in a $17,585 payout.

Tyler, Johnson, and Dupree were involved in a separate scheme where they withdrew money from their accounts at ATMs, then falsely claimed their debit cards were stolen. They filed false police reports and sought reimbursement from their banks, facing up to 30 years for conspiracy to commit bank fraud.

At the time of the indictment in August 2021, all six were active officers in their respective departments. In fact, the insurance fraud case is not an isolated incident but part of a pattern. 

In January 2020, Owen fatally shot 43-year-old William Green, while Green was handcuffed in the front seat of a police cruiser. The killing sparked outrage and protests across Prince George’s County and beyond.

Green had been detained after a minor traffic accident and was reportedly calm and compliant. Nevertheless, Owen shot him six times at close range, later claiming he feared for his life. The incident was one of several high-profile police killings that year, fueling the nationwide movement against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Owen was ultimately charged with second-degree murder and other offenses, a rare occurrence in cases of police violence. In 2022, he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter which was rejected after it was criticized by the Green family. Owen was found not guilty of the charges related to the killing of Green in late 2023, just as he was facing charges for fraud. 

Owen and his associates’ crime ring is only one example of systematic criminality within local law enforcement. In 2018, members of Baltimore’s notorious Gun Task Force were found guilty of corruption involving racketeering, robbery and fraud, among other crimes. The police within this unit routinely planted weapons and evidence on unsuspecting innocents, stopping and searching people without cause and other brazenly corrupt behavior to pad the “elite” teams’ statistics.

Another point should be made regarding the police crime ring. As in numerous cases, the six charged officers in the Maryland fraud ring were racially diverse, including African American and others of different racial backgrounds, exploding the myth sown by practitioners of identity politics that police abuse stems from the perceived inherent and eternal racism existing in American society. 

The trajectory of Owen’s career—from a police officer involved in a notorious killing to a convicted fraudster—highlights the persistent problems of corruption, impunity, and lack of oversight within American policing. The crisis of police violence and misconduct is not primarily the result of “bad apples” or racism—although both are in large abundance within American police departments—but reflects systemic issues deeply embedded in class society itself.

Despite widespread public outrage and calls for reform, meaningful accountability remains elusive. Officers involved in misconduct or violence are rarely prosecuted, and when they are, sentences are often lenient. According to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which tracks federal prosecutions of public officials, including police, there has been a massive drop in conviction rates of almost 70 percent since the early 2000s. At that time, there were almost 900 federal corruption prosecutions yearly.

Under Trump’s second term, corruption throughout the government has received a new lease on life. The fascist president has issued a flurry of pardons for police officers convicted of brutalizing the public, bribe-taking, and other crimes. This occurs as his government has sought to override constitutional checks and balances provided by the US Constitution in Congress and the courts in an effort to set up a presidential dictatorship in which the decree of the executive is law.