Former Massachusetts State Police Sergeant sentenced to six years in CDLs for bribes scheme

A former Massachusetts State Police (MSP) Sergeant has been sentenced to prison for “orchestrating a series of schemes to give false passing scores to certain Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) applicants” in exchange for bribes.

On October 14, 2025, Gary Cederquist, 60, was sentenced to six years in prison to be followed by two years of supervised release. He was also ordered to pay a $30,000 fine, MassLive reports.

In May 2025, Cederquist was convicted by a federal jury in Boston on two counts of conspiracy to commit extortion, one count of extortion, six counts of honest services mail fraud, three counts of conspiracy to falsify records, 19 counts of falsification of records and 17 counts of false statements.

Cederquist was charged along with three other MSP troopers and two civilians in January 2024 in a 74-count indictment for a years-long scheme to provide unqualified applicants with CDLs in exchange for bribes that included beverages and candy.

“It is never a good day when a member of law enforcement is convicted of a crime, especially when it is a crime that compromises public safety. Gary Cederquist chose bribery and extortion over his oath to protect the community which he was sworn to serve. His greed put the public at risk when he devised a scheme to issue commercial driver’s licenses to applicants who had never taken a real test to operate heavy commercial vehicles on the roads and highways of Massachusetts,” said United States Attorney Leah B. Foley. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office has the utmost respect for law enforcement, but we will not stand idly by if they violate the law.”

Officials said that Cederquist gave false passing scores on CDL road skills tests to 40 commercial driver’s license applicants.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office describes the scheme:

“Between in on or about February 2019 and January 2023, Cederquist arranged for him and his co-conspirators to give passing scores to at least three dozen applicants regardless of whether or not they had actually passed or, in some cases, had even taken the CDL skills test, including in some instances in exchange for bribes. Cederquist and his co-conspirators used the code word “golden handshake” or “golden” to identify applicants who received special treatment and were to be given passing scores on their skills tests regardless of performance. In text message conversations, Cederquist and his co-conspirators described a number of “golden” applicants as performing poorly on their skills tests. However, all of the applicants received passing scores.

Among the CDL applicants to whom Cederquist gave preferential treatment were six MSP Troopers who Cederquist falsely reported as having passed a Class A skills test. In reality, however, the Troopers did not take a real CDL skills test. For four of the Trooper applicants, Cederquist conspired with his friend Camara, who worked for a truck-driving school in Brockton, to accomplish this offense.

Cederquist also conspired with his friend Mathison, who worked for a water company that employed drivers who needed CDLs, to give passing scores to certain applicants affiliated with the water company. In exchange for the passing scores, Cederquist accepted bribes – for years – of free inventory from the water company, such as cases of bottled Fiji, VOSS and Essentia water, cases of bottled Arizona Iced Tea, coffee and tea products and boxes of Twizzlers and Swedish Fish, all of which Mathison delivered to an office trailer at the CDL test site in Stoughton. Cederquist sent Mathison a text describing one of these applicants as “an idiot,” who had “no idea what he’s doing,” and “should have failed about 10 times already.” Cederquist then texted Mathison that Mathison’s boss “owes big time.”

In exchange for using his official position to give preferential treatment to certain CDL applicants, Cederquist accepted a variety of bribes including inventory from Mathison’s water company valued in the thousands of dollars; a $750 granite post and mailbox; a new driveway valued at over $10,000; and a snowblower valued at nearly $2,000. Cederquist described one such applicant as “horrible,” and “brain dead,” but gave him a passing score anyway in exchange for the snowblower.“

All unqualified CDL recipients associated with this scheme were reported to the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles.