Here is a story that is likely to get the blood boiling for many people this morning:
Soldiers from the California Army National Guard have been ordered to return enlistment bonuses they received a decade ago when the Pentagon needed troops for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (California Army National Guard)
Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.
Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.
Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.
Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets. [LA Times]
You can read the rest at the link, but basically California National Guard personnel were illegally giving out federal reenlistment bonuses to personnel who did not qualify in order to meet their quotas:
In 2010, after reports surfaced of improper payments, a federal investigation found that thousands of bonuses and student loan payments were given to California Guard soldiers who did not qualify for them, or were approved despite paperwork errors.
Army Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, the California Guard’s incentive manager, pleaded guilty in 2011 to filing false claims of $15.2 million and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison. Three officers also pleaded guilty to fraud and were put on probation after paying restitution.
Instead of forgiving the improper bonuses, the California Guard assigned 42 auditors to comb through paperwork for bonuses and other incentive payments given to 14,000 soldiers, a process that was finally completed last month.
Roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers have been told by the California Guard to repay some or all of their bonuses and the recoupment effort has recovered more than $22 million so far.
The way I look at it is if the personnel who were given the bonuses did not know they were improperly given then why should they be forced to pay it back when they fulfilled their end of the contract? This looks like something Congress needs to take a hard look at and rectify.
This is happening in a lot of places. They’re having the same issues with some bonuses given to contractors as incentive pay (at both the base I am currently at, and the last one). In some cases they aren’t just taking away the bonuses, they expect people to pay back money over the course of several years after fulfilling a contract. There is nowhere outside of the military where this type of thing would wash.
Smokes at Work
7 years ago
“why should they be forced to pay it back ”
Simple, they weren’t entitled to it and people knowingly defrauded the US in giving it to them. Were the recipients compliant in the fraud? Doubtfully but look at the case of the great LQA Kerfuffle of 20whenever. That was largely due to inaccurate interpretations of the guidelines with no major roots in fraud (can’t account for every scheming bastad out there) and they made people pay that back. This is outright theft and people essentially received stolen goods so…. yeah…
Will/should they waiver these people if there’s no proof they were in on the scheme? Beats me; seeing how many mountains of cash the government wastes on BS I don’t think it would be a horrible thing to waiver this.
This is a good argument to stop with all the line items and just set wages more realistically. All these shadow compensation programs make it all the more expensive, inefficient, and corruption-prone to just see people paid. But they ain’t going to do that cause F reason. ❓
If the service members signed on to commitments for an agreed upon price, and they fulfilled that commitment and now this payment is demanded back, they too have been defrauded.
Yes which makes this a pretty crappy situation all around. The criminals who caused all this have been punished but can’t in any way make things right financially, the people who got the bonuses did so under what they thought were legit contracts, and the government allotted taxpayer funding their way on the premise the right thing was being done in that qualifications were properly vetted.
They can form a commission to study how an oversight program can be created tasked with ensuring this doesn’t happen again that will cost about what was stolen this time around just to get off the ground and will only ever grow and never ever go away and things will take longer and corruption will still happen or they could just stop with all this compensation crap and pay the fair wage outright.
“and they made people pay that back”
Smokes all I read about it this debt was generously forgiven and they got a year of nipple sucking to wean them off of LQA.
In both case there’s a crooked S-1/reup NCO or CPAC clerk who knows damn well what’s going on. just like Hillary, we let them get away with it. I draw the line then at comparing Soldier to some scumbag Civilian at a desk, Grant relief to the Guardsmen, they made pennies on the dollar compared to the GS folks and had to serve where they were sent. .
Yeah…it’s really only going to get worse (at least in the USAF, not familiar with the Army). The Reserve and Guard are taking over so many jobs, and there are a lot of different tiers of pay depending on the situation. I know a person who was offered a job and told she would have her move paid for. After she moved, not only was the move not paid for, but the job wasn’t the same tier as she was promised and she would be making about 2/3 what she was promised. Oh, and since she couldn’t pay off the money on her credit card right away for the cost of the move she was also subject to disciplinary action. With a family she’d moved across the country for this job.
There are a lot of bad stories out there. Usually, it’s just individuals getting screwed over but with 10,000 folks screwed over simultaneously it makes the news faster.
The military compensates with suicide prevention powerpoint presentations and spousal support activities. Because when they take your money after sending you to a hell hole many times, more “voluntary” social engagements and training activities and clubs and stuff are thing that will make everything better.
I believe that if the contract these guardsmen signed does not state the reasons they are ineligible for the bonus then they should keep the money. However, if the contract stated in there a qualification criteria that they did not meet then they should have to give back the money. This seems pretty simple to me and hopefully someone in Congress looks at this.
Ole Tanker
7 years ago
CCNN reports unnamed sources attest to the fact that Donald Trump was the Prime for many on base Military Contracts over several years.
Hey how close to ETS/retirement were you when you started getting nervous? Those years of leaning back in your chair, arms crossed behind you head smugly proclaiming “ehh I did my time” while stroking your rockers quickly eroding the farce that you were anything other than a babysitter. Keep hating because it’s a good indicator of the service we perform when garbage NCOs get all whiny.
A spot check prepared by Clark’s office for Kight examined 62 individuals who received $1.2 million in loan repayments and bonuses over the last several years. Auditors found that at least 52 appeared to have benefited improperly. The recipients, about half of them commissioned officers ranking as high as major, got the funds despite falsified documents, ineligibility, payments beyond program limits and other improprieties.
When he began to grasp the magnitude of the problems, Sgt. Cody Lathrop, one of two managers who replaced Jaffe after she retired a year ago, prepared a sworn statement for the record included in the documents The Bee obtained. That statement, provided to federal auditors, cited “serious illegal activity” and “systematic and historic abuse and mismanagement of fiscal law, guidance and policy.
It’s one thing to try and claw back money from Spec4 Snuffy who used it to buy a used Mustang, but an officer receives $63,000 in student loan repayments from way back, and he doesn’t think “Hmm, this might be more than I’m eligible for?”
There’s snatching back money from our Brave Heroes, then there is holding senior personnel accountable for waste, fraud and abuse.
Sac Bee is not the most even handed reporting newspaper, but this is looking like someone, or several someones were making hay while the sun shined.
@MTB Rider, that was an interesting read. It appears the corruption was way out in the open in the CA guard. The examples in the article are pretty convincing that those mentioned should pay back the money. That is why I think the paperwork for each of these Guardsmen should be looked at to determine if they should have known the payments were improper instead of a blanket order to recoup all money like they are currently doing.
With that all said what a mess the CA Guard is. It also makes me wonder what other Guard units are doing the same thing and no one has blown the whistle on them yet like what happened with the CA Guard?
This is happening in a lot of places. They’re having the same issues with some bonuses given to contractors as incentive pay (at both the base I am currently at, and the last one). In some cases they aren’t just taking away the bonuses, they expect people to pay back money over the course of several years after fulfilling a contract. There is nowhere outside of the military where this type of thing would wash.
“why should they be forced to pay it back ”
Simple, they weren’t entitled to it and people knowingly defrauded the US in giving it to them. Were the recipients compliant in the fraud? Doubtfully but look at the case of the great LQA Kerfuffle of 20whenever. That was largely due to inaccurate interpretations of the guidelines with no major roots in fraud (can’t account for every scheming bastad out there) and they made people pay that back. This is outright theft and people essentially received stolen goods so…. yeah…
Will/should they waiver these people if there’s no proof they were in on the scheme? Beats me; seeing how many mountains of cash the government wastes on BS I don’t think it would be a horrible thing to waiver this.
This is a good argument to stop with all the line items and just set wages more realistically. All these shadow compensation programs make it all the more expensive, inefficient, and corruption-prone to just see people paid. But they ain’t going to do that cause F reason. ❓
If the service members signed on to commitments for an agreed upon price, and they fulfilled that commitment and now this payment is demanded back, they too have been defrauded.
Yes which makes this a pretty crappy situation all around. The criminals who caused all this have been punished but can’t in any way make things right financially, the people who got the bonuses did so under what they thought were legit contracts, and the government allotted taxpayer funding their way on the premise the right thing was being done in that qualifications were properly vetted.
They can form a commission to study how an oversight program can be created tasked with ensuring this doesn’t happen again that will cost about what was stolen this time around just to get off the ground and will only ever grow and never ever go away and things will take longer and corruption will still happen or they could just stop with all this compensation crap and pay the fair wage outright.
I’m guessing the former will happen. 😛
“and they made people pay that back”
Smokes all I read about it this debt was generously forgiven and they got a year of nipple sucking to wean them off of LQA.
In both case there’s a crooked S-1/reup NCO or CPAC clerk who knows damn well what’s going on. just like Hillary, we let them get away with it. I draw the line then at comparing Soldier to some scumbag Civilian at a desk, Grant relief to the Guardsmen, they made pennies on the dollar compared to the GS folks and had to serve where they were sent. .
Yeah…it’s really only going to get worse (at least in the USAF, not familiar with the Army). The Reserve and Guard are taking over so many jobs, and there are a lot of different tiers of pay depending on the situation. I know a person who was offered a job and told she would have her move paid for. After she moved, not only was the move not paid for, but the job wasn’t the same tier as she was promised and she would be making about 2/3 what she was promised. Oh, and since she couldn’t pay off the money on her credit card right away for the cost of the move she was also subject to disciplinary action. With a family she’d moved across the country for this job.
There are a lot of bad stories out there. Usually, it’s just individuals getting screwed over but with 10,000 folks screwed over simultaneously it makes the news faster.
Again, ONLY in the military can they do this.
Imagine a company trying this tactic. They’d be sued into the ground.
The military compensates with suicide prevention powerpoint presentations and spousal support activities. Because when they take your money after sending you to a hell hole many times, more “voluntary” social engagements and training activities and clubs and stuff are thing that will make everything better.
I believe that if the contract these guardsmen signed does not state the reasons they are ineligible for the bonus then they should keep the money. However, if the contract stated in there a qualification criteria that they did not meet then they should have to give back the money. This seems pretty simple to me and hopefully someone in Congress looks at this.
CCNN reports unnamed sources attest to the fact that Donald Trump was the Prime for many on base Military Contracts over several years.
Hey how close to ETS/retirement were you when you started getting nervous? Those years of leaning back in your chair, arms crossed behind you head smugly proclaiming “ehh I did my time” while stroking your rockers quickly eroding the farce that you were anything other than a babysitter. Keep hating because it’s a good indicator of the service we perform when garbage NCOs get all whiny.
An interesting article going into who got what, and how much in over payments were dispersed to soldiers who were not eligible, AND should have known they were not eligible:
http://www.sacbee.com/news/investigations/article2573111.html
It’s one thing to try and claw back money from Spec4 Snuffy who used it to buy a used Mustang, but an officer receives $63,000 in student loan repayments from way back, and he doesn’t think “Hmm, this might be more than I’m eligible for?”
There’s snatching back money from our Brave Heroes, then there is holding senior personnel accountable for waste, fraud and abuse.
Sac Bee is not the most even handed reporting newspaper, but this is looking like someone, or several someones were making hay while the sun shined.
@MTB Rider, that was an interesting read. It appears the corruption was way out in the open in the CA guard. The examples in the article are pretty convincing that those mentioned should pay back the money. That is why I think the paperwork for each of these Guardsmen should be looked at to determine if they should have known the payments were improper instead of a blanket order to recoup all money like they are currently doing.
With that all said what a mess the CA Guard is. It also makes me wonder what other Guard units are doing the same thing and no one has blown the whistle on them yet like what happened with the CA Guard?