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CRANSTON, R.I. — A 27-year-old guard at the Adult Correctional Institutions has been arrested by state police after allegedly pretending to be his boss, department of corrections head A.T. Wall, on a page posted on Facebook.

State police said Matthew Lacroix, 27, admitted to posting the page on Wednesday morning after detectives visited a home at 20 Ontario St. in West Warwick, where there was a computer with an IP address linked to the fraudulent Facebook account.

“The couple living there knew nothing about it, but in the course of the conversation, they mentioned that their neighbor was a corrections employee,” said state police Capt. James Demers. “Detectives went next door and Lacroix initially denied having anything to do with the page but later admitted it because he did not want to get his neighbors in trouble.”

Demers said Lacroix, who was friendly with the people next door, would drop into their house occasionally and had access to their computer, which he used to set up the Facebook account.

Tracey E. Zeckhausen, corrections spokeswoman, said the department’s internal affairs unit had first learned about the page last August and later turned it over to the state police. She said that within hours of the page first being noticed, the department contacted Facebook to have the page taken down.

Lacroix has been employed at the ACI for the last five years with an annual salary of $49,831. On Wednesday he pleaded guilty to a charge of “use of fraudulent information” in an arraignment in Third Division District Court and was ordered to pay a $500 fine into the Victims Indemnity Fund.

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