A retired state trooper has pleaded guilty to stealing thousands of dollars through phony overtime slips, with the plea coming less than a week after three other troopers were arrested on embezzlement charges.

Trooper Gregory Raftery, who retired earlier this year, pleaded guilty to embezzling from the state police in a filing in U.S. District Court today. Raftery was not one of the troopers arrested last week, but he had earlier been named in an audit that referred 40 troopers with questionable overtime claims to the attorney general's office.

The charge of embezzlment carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in jail and a fine of $250,000, but under the plea the feds are recommending a prison sentence between a year and 18 months, an unspecified fine and restitution of the $51,337 Raftery stole, according to the plea.

Raftery, a member of the MassPike-patrolling Troop E that has since been disbanded due to the overtime scandal, was one of dozens of troopers who reportedly faked work on an overtime program designed to target speeders through additional patrols. According to his indictment, Raftery reportedly worked nearly 300 of those shifts in 2015 and 2016 but left early "on a regular basis" while still filing for the shifts, and on "several occasions" never showed up for work at all.

To cover his tracks, Raftery submitted fake citations for traffic stops that never took place, using the state police computer database to get Registry of Motor Vehicles information for the tickets.