To US District Judge Mark L. Wolf, federal prosecutors involved in the Massachusetts State Police overtime fraud scandal may not be looking at every legal penalty possible.

During a sentencing hearing for retired trooper Daren DeJong on Thursday, Wolf said that the fraud scandal could amount to “a conspiracy” — and he says it could have been going on for more than 10 years. Proving that could be difficult, as state police records prior to 2015 have been destroyed. Prosecutors did allow that their investigation was “constrained” by the practice of destroying records after three years.

Wolf delayed sentencing of DeJong, citing a need for more information. One other possible cause for delay was DeJong’s admission that he is cooperating with an investigation being run by Attorney General Maura Healey.

Wolf said his conspiracy theory may be worth exploring because there was “a kind of interdependence … among troopers” involved in the case, suggesting they were in cahoots to conceal the overtime abuse. “Any one of them could’ve blown the whistle,” Wolf said at the federal courthouse in Boston. “It now appears this case may involve an uncharged conspiracy or RICO conspiracy.”

If a conspiracy charge were added, DeJong could face 21 to 27 months in prison, as opposed to the six months prosecutors are currently pushing for under his embezzlement charge.

The overtime abuse took place between 2015 and 2016 within the now-defunct Troop E, and was investigated internally by state police beginning in 2017. DeJong, who plead guilty to embezzlement, is among 46 troopers allegedly tied up in the scandal, which centered around skipping or leaving overtime shifts early early and creating fake traffic citations for periods when officers were not working. In DeJong’s case, that meant he was paid $14,062 for hours he didn’t actually work back in 2016, the only year prosecutors are focusing on.

If the troopers were to face charges under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, they would face similar penalties to Mafia and organized crime organizations. Enforcement agencies could charge acts of racketeering as a group, not just one crime at a time.

Wolf thinks it’s worth checking out, given that DeJong told state investigators he received a text from a trooper that said “they would not be writing citations that day and that he should go home and be with his family.”

Assistant US Attorney Dustin Chao discounted the conspiracy theory, saying troopers used “different ways to submit fraudulent tickets,” according to the Boston Globe.

DeJong’s attorney, R. Bradford Bailey, also dismissed Wolf’s conspiracy theory. “There was no agreement how to do this, there was no teaching how to do this,” he said.

SARAH BETANCOURT

BEACON HILL

A member of the governor’s council charged that favoritism was behind the appointment of a college pal of Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito’s as a clerk magistrate in Cambridge. (Boston Herald)

Residents opposed to a proposed natural gas compressor station in Weymouth say they are outraged that Matthew Beaton, the outgoing secretary of energy and environmental affairs, is going to work for a company with ties to the project. (Patriot Ledger)

The Senate takes on racial profiling, again, in a distracted driving bill. (CommonWealth)

The Newton chamber of commerce is getting behind Gov. Charlie Baker’s housing bill. (Boston Globe)

MUNICIPAL MATTERS

Less than 1 percent of the $664 million in contracts awarded last year by the city of Boston went to women- or minority-owned firms. (Boston Globe)

Arlington Town Manager Adam Chapdelaine and others decided to use restorative justice principles to discipline Arlington Police Lt. Rick Pedrini for an inflammatory column he wrote, but not everyone was satisfied with that approach. (WBUR)

WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused Attorney General William Barr of lying to Congress and the House Judiciary Committee threatened to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t hand over the full Mueller report. (New York Times)

ELECTIONS

Scot Lehigh lays out why Joe Biden has quickly moved to the top of the pack — and may stay there. (Boston Globe) The former VP is a perfect candidate — for the 20th century, writes former CommonWealth editor Dave Denison, now an editor at The Baffler.

The Washington Post takes a closer look at Bernie Sanders’s 1988 honeymoon to the Soviet Union.

BUSINESS/ECONOMY

DigBoston editor Jason Pramas challenges landlords’ views on rent control.

EDUCATION

Boston’s incoming school superintendent, Brenda Cassellius, says she opposes testing for “individual high-stakes testing,” including the 10th grade MCAS graduation requirement, a stand that puts her at odds with a pillar of the state education reform law. (CommonWealth) Cassellius says she will focus on community engagement when she takes the reins. (Boston Globe)   Meanwhile, an education advocate in Minnesota is suing the state, saying racial segregation among districts in the Twin Cities area during Cassellius’s tenure as state commissioner has consigned minority students to an inferior education. (Boston Herald)

In a sign of our polarized times, a judge’s decision was needed to move ahead with a pro-Palestinian panel discussion at UMass Amherst on Saturday. (CommonWealth)

Superintendent Derek Swenson says A&A Metro Transportation in Bridgewater has agreed to take over the pay-to-ride program on a private basis for Bridgewater and Raynham students within a mile-and-a-half of their schools starting next school year. (Brockton Enterprise)

HEALTH/HEALTH CARE

Rep. Timothy Whelan of Brewster says “we have a crisis on our hands” with recent assisted living facility closures. The owner of The Royal at Harwich Village notified residents April 26 that it intends to close that facility by July 26, according to officials from the state Executive Office of Elder Affairs. (Cape Cod Times)

ARTS/CULTURE

Patrick Flynn and Jennifer Wright are buying the long-shuttered Olympia Theatre in Worcester with hopes of bringing live shows to the venue. (MassLive)

When the American Heritage Museum opens Friday, visitors to the Stow campus will have a chance to see one of the largest collections of tanks and military vehicles in the country.

The Provincetown Select Board has given unanimous support for Starz P-Town productions to film key location scenes for the eight-episode first season of “Hightown” for the pay-cable channel Starz. (Cape Cod Times)

TRANSPORTATION

James Aloisi of TransitMatters thinks the stars are aligned for a major transportation initiative to emerge from the State House this session, so he weighs in on ride-hailing apps, the Red-Blue subway connector, and tolling. (CommonWealth)

ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT

The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission wants to reduce the amount of striped bass fished next year, and a technical committee says a 17 percent reduction of the commercial and recreational catch would be required. (Gloucester Daily Times)

CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS

All five defendants in the trial of Insys Therapeutics executives were found guilty of racketeering charges in what’s believed to be the first criminal prosecution of pharmaceutical company officials in connection with illegally promoting opioid use. (Boston Globe)

The state’s district attorneys are demanding that judges stop using self-developed sentencing guidelines that haven’t been approved by the Legislature. (The Enterprise)

Federal judge Mark Wolf asks whether conspiracy charges are warranted in the State Police overtime scandal because troopers seemed to be working together. (MassLive)

A video that appears to show a Fall River police officer punching a high school student in the area of his head and neck led to a Fall River police investigation into whether the officer’s use of force was justified. (Herald News)

Deego Jibril, a refugee from Somalia who moved to Boston, will be honored by FBI Director Christopher Wray for forging a relationship between her community in Roxbury and law enforcement. (WGBH)

Jurors in the indecent assault and battery trial of Dr. Walter Levitsky heard from the former patient who said he fondled her on the pretext of doing a body-mass index. (Salem News)

Accused murderer Mathew Borges told friends in a group chat that he was going to “kill someone,” but his defense attorney suggested the chat was full of outrageous claims where teens wrote about shooting up a school and other topics. (Eagle-Tribune)

After more than six days of deliberations, jurors in Plymouth could not reach a unanimous decision on a murder charge filed against Quincy lawyer Michael Moscaritolo, accused of planning a robbery in which a Marshfield homeowner was killed. Superior Court Judge Cornelius Moriarty declared a mistrial. (Patriot Ledger)

MEDIA

Casey Sherman says the Boston Phoenix’s crusading journalism was made possible by sex ads in the paper exploiting young women, something he says should be acknowledged in the archives of the defunct alt-weekly based at Northeastern University. (Boston Herald)

New Orleans becomes a one newspaper town, as Advance Local Media, the owner of Nola.com and the Times-Picayune, agrees to sell to Capital Publications, the owner of the Advocate. Capital Publications is owned by John and Dathel Georges. (WDSU News)