Tag: fraud

Stories like this make me wonder how much more fraud is going on in regards to VA disability payments?:

An Army deserter from Morganton is accused of receiving tens of thousands of dollars in veteran benefits by faking war wounds and military honors.

Roy Lee Ross Jr., 64, faces up to 35 years in prison on charges of executing a scheme to defraud the Veterans Administration, making false statements in connection with the delivery of VA health care benefits, stealing from the VA and making a false claim for travel benefits from the VA.

According to a federal indictment released on Friday, Ross enlisted in the Army in 1973 and was stationed stateside and in West Germany.

But he never served in Vietnam or Korea, was not in the Special Forces and never was wounded as he claimed, according to the indictment.  [Charlotte Observer]

You can read more at the link, but this guy did not make just one claim with the VA, but went back three times for additional claims and was able to get his monthly disability check increased to $2,906 per month and then even after getting this money he went and filed for travel reimbursement.

I guess this guy felt like he had nothing to lose by committing another criminal act while serving time in prison already:

A former state correction officer and lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve was arrested Friday on charges that he collected wages from the state while serving a prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Dennis Dockery, 52, of Bloomfield, was charged Friday with first-degree larceny by defrauding a public community and two counts of second-degree forgery. Dockery, who worked as a correction officer at the Enfield Correctional Institution, was incarcerated for 17 months at Leavenworth after he was found guilty of assaulting a woman in Hamden while on active duty with the Army, according to the warrant for his arrest.

As a military reservist, Dockery was still on the state payroll and entitled to a portion of his state salary while activated for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

He was not entitled to any salary while serving time in a military prison, but forged his orders so that it appeared he was serving at Fort Leavenworth rather than incarcerated, according to the warrant. The state requires employees activated for military service to submit his or her orders to the agency they work for to confirm they are entitled to any wages.

According to the arrest warrant, Dockery fraudulently received $5,182 in salary from the state.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link.

These African scammers sure are creative and their victims seem to get dumber and dumber:

African con artists have found another way to swindle Koreans, this time by selling pieces of regular paper that they claim are actually U.S. banknotes.

In this so-called “black money” or “money wash” scam, unsuspecting victims are persuaded that stacks of banknote-sized black pieces of paper are $100 bills that have been dyed black and smuggled from a U.S. relief fund for Africa. Wide-eyed victims then pay large amounts of money for heaps of black paper and a dye-remover machine or liquid, believing they have purchased U.S. dollars far below the exchange rate.

Last month, a 45-year-old Korean businessman was strolling through Itaewon, a popular neighborhood in Seoul known for its many cafes, bars and foreign restaurants, when a Liberian approached him and said he had a lucrative business proposal. After leading the Korean to a nearby parked van, he fed a piece of black paper into a small machine, and soon the device spit out a crisp $100 bill. The businessman took the bill to a bank, where he was told that it was genuine.

He paid 540 million won ($463,100) for the machine and a sizable portion of black paper. He borrowed the money from associates.

The machine was a simple paper dispenser previously loaded for the demonstration with a genuine banknote.  [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link, but it seems the victim is just as bad as the con artist if they though they were receiving stolen African aid money.

The President of the Korean state run English channel Arirang TV appears to have been enjoying some lavish meals on the Korean taxpayer’s dime:

The president of the state-run English broadcaster Arirang TV was accused Monday of fiddling his expenses on an overseas trip, including a lavish caviar meal.

Rep. Choi Min-hee of the main opposition Minjoo Party said Bang Suk-ho, president of Arirang TV, used a corporate credit card to pay for personal expenses during a business trip to New York City last September. Bang traveled to the United States to cover President Park Geun-hye’s address at the United Nations General Assembly, which Arirang aired live.

According to Choi’s office, Bang spent $930 at a restaurant specializing in caviar in New York City on Sept. 24, the first day of his trip, and later expensed the meal, saying it was a meeting with the head of the Korean Cultural Service in New York City.

On Sept. 27, 2015, Bang visited the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets shopping mall in Central Valley, New York, and used his corporate credit card for food. He expensed that meal saying that it was a meeting with Seo Sok-min, an official at the United Nations headquarters.

According to the Kyunghyang Shinmun newspaper, both officials denied sharing meals with Bang or even meeting him.

Arirang TV said Monday that Bang did not misappropriate corporate money during his New York City trip, but mistakes were made when the expenses were filed. [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read more at the link.

What I am wondering about most with this story is why is the police department paying their officers for up to 30 days pay when they are getting a paycheck already from the military when on orders?  This is just another example of good intentions creating an incentive for people like this guy to cheat the taxpayer:

 

A former police officer with a little more than a year on the job has been arrested for going on a Hawaiian vacation with his girlfriend while he was receiving full pay from the department while he was purportedly on a deployment with the US Army Reserves, police said.

In a press release from Lt. Sean Cooney, commander of the Stamford police department’s Internal Affairs Division, recently resigned police officer Donald Chen, 30, has been charged with first-degree larceny and defrauding a public community and was released without bond.

“I’m extremely disappointed with what happened,” police Chief Jon Fontneau said Tuesday morning. Fontneau said that the department supports their military veterans in every way it can, including allowing them to go on deployments for up to 30 days a year with pay. “What we found to be was a case of fraud committed not only to the city of Stamford and its taxpayers and the U.S. Government,” he said.

Fontneau said that Chen, a former member of the US Army, resigned from the department before he could be fired. “He would have been fired,” Fontneau said. Chen will not receive a pension or any kind of a pay out. Fontneau said that the department will ask that prosecutors on Chen’s case apply for restitution of more than $2,000 that he was being paid for by the city for his military service.  [Stars and Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

With the amount of money this guy was able to fraud people out of, it seems it would be really easy for him to bribe people to fake his death:

The purported death of Cho Hee-pal, the mastermind behind South Korea’s largest-ever fraud case, returned to the spotlight as his close aide was arrested in China last week, with fresh testimonies suggesting he is actually still alive.

Cho is one of the most-wanted conmen in South Korea, having allegedly scammed up to 50,000 people out of an estimated 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) in a pyramid marketing scheme.

The purported death of Cho Hee-pal, the mastermind behind South Korea’s largest-ever fraud case, returned to the spotlight as his close aide was arrested in China last week, with fresh testimonies suggesting he is actually still alive.

Cho is one of the most-wanted conmen in South Korea, having allegedly scammed up to 50,000 people out of an estimated 4 trillion won ($3.5 billion) in a pyramid marketing scheme.  [Korea Herald]

You can read the rest at the link, but just think the $3.5 billion this guy swindled people out of is nothing compared to the $18 billion Bernie Madoff swindle people out of the in the US.  At least Madoff is sitting in jail unlike Cho who likely still living freely in China.

Who knew siphoning off school lunch food could be so lucrative?:

A private high school in Seoul allegedly served terrible meals to students, and 18 people, including the principal, are accused of embezzling about 400 million won ($343,000) from the lunch budget.

The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education revealed on Sunday the result of three inspections of Choongam High School’s school meal system from May to August this year.

“We’ve found problems in the school meal system and evidence of embezzlement that adds up to at least 410 million won,” the education office said. “We’ve reported 18 people, including the principal, administrative officer and school meal subcontractors, to the prosecution and requested some of them be sacked.”

The school has been criticized for terrible food, and its vice principal openly scolded students who did not pay for meals.

A teacher said in a radio interview that the school did not replace cooking oil until it turned black and fried dishes sometimes had black powder on them.

The school is suspected to have tried to cover up the facts when the education office was about to start its inspection in May.

According to an education office inspection report acquired by the JoongAng Ilbo, a subcontractor who delivered food to the school was told to “only talk about the business and tell nothing about other affairs when the education office calls” by a former executive of the school meal subcontractor.

“Employees of subcontractors did not properly answer questions,” an official of the inspector’s office said, “and they appeared to be hiding something.” [Joong Ang Ilbo]

You can read the rest at the link.

It is good this guy was caught and sentenced, but how stupid and gullible are the victims to fall for this scam?:

A former Camp Stanley employee has been sentenced to five years in prison for fraud and related charges after selling nonexistent base jobs to more than two dozen South Koreans.

The employee, surnamed Gang, worked more than 20 years in the Uijeongbu-area base, most recently as an ambulance driver, before being fired in March over the allegations.

Gang used a U.S. soldier who was unaware of the scam to interview Koreans by phone to test their English, South Korean police said. More than 30 victims paid him a total of $750,000 for the fake jobs over six and a half years, according to sentencing documents from the Anyang branch of the Suwon District Court.

Gang was also convicted of counterfeiting documents and circulating forged documents. He wrote 11 false letters of employment, using a computer at a U.S. military medical facility in Uijeongbu to produce at least one of the letters.

Among his victims was a woman who paid Gang 25 million won (almost $21,500) in 2013, believing she was securing a civilian job for her son with U.S. Forces Korea. Another woman, police said, paid Gang 100 million won (about $86,000) for administrative jobs for her husband, son and daughter. Gang promised some of his victims he would pay the human resources manager at an Army hospital, and their jobs would be guaranteed until retirement at age 68.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

I don’t know what’s worse about this story, the victims trying to bribe their way into jobs or the conman who took their money for himself?:

A former Camp Stanley employee was arrested on allegations that he bilked South Koreans out of more than $740,000 in exchange for non-existent base jobs — and enlisted an unwitting U.S. soldier’s help to pull off the scam, South Korean police said.

The man identified by the surname Gang, 54, posed as a high-level base hospital official and convinced 27 people during the past six years to hand him a total of 800 million won, Uiwang Police Station officials told Stars and Stripes.

Gang forged Army documents and took his victims on tours of Yongsan Garrison, Camp Humphreys and other areas to help sell his story, police said.

Gang also convinced a U.S. soldier at Camp Stanley that the victims were prospective employees, then had the soldier interview them by phone to test their English, said Jo Min-chang, of Uiwang’s Economic Crime Investigation Team.

Police said they do not think the soldier knew he was participating in fraud.

Gang worked at Camp Stanley for more than 20 years before being fired last month, Jo said. He had most recently served as an ambulance driver.

When the victims began to complain about employment delays, police say Gang issued forged apology letters that used official Army logos, fonts and style, if not necessarily proper grammar.

“We would like to make an apology for any damage to who are newly employed and promoted because of a conflict between the 8th Army and Korean members of the 8th Army,” one of the letters read, according to a sample obtained from Uiwang police. “We, the 8th Army, are sincerely doing our best to make smooth recovery. And therefore, we would like to wish domestic bliss.”

In other letters, he blamed North Korean nuclear threats and bilateral defense budgets for causing delays, police said.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read the rest at the link.

Here is a perfect example of why the safety and cheating culture that is pervasive in South Korea is so hard to change:

The whistleblower who exposed breakthrough cloning research as a devastating fake says South Korea is still dominated by the values that allowed science fraudster Hwang Woo-suk to become an almost untouchable national hero.

In an interview with The Associated Press after almost a decade of silence, Ryu Young-joon, one of Hwang’s former researchers, said the cost of telling the truth still weighs on him but he doesn’t regret his decision to out Hwang as a false prophet.

The revelations in 2005 rocked South Korea which had celebrated Hwang’s research as a historic achievement, focused unfavorable attention on the country and diminished the reputation of its scientific establishment. The memory of the scandal is still painful today and Hwang, though convicted of embezzlement and violating bioethical laws, discredited and relegated to the scientific backwater of pet cloning, retains a loyal following among sections of the public and media.

In the nearly 10 years since Hwang’s accomplishments were found to be built on lies, Ryu feels little has changed in a society where cozy ties between government, business, the media and academics stifle criticism and foster blind nationalism. And junior researchers still face great pressure to produce the results their scientific mentors want and lack a formal channel for whistleblowing.

South Korea, said Ryu, is still obsessed with joining the ranks of advanced countries and to achieve that end, many people believe it is acceptable to sacrifice ethics, safety and other concerns.

“Mr. Hwang is not a peculiar person. He is a portrait of us. He shows the South Korean society as it is,” Ryu said. “Most people believe that if we play by the rules, we can’t catch up with the advanced economies.”  [Associated Press via the Korea Economic Reader]

You can read the rest at the link, but what I find ironic about South Korean society being so caught up in catching up with advanced economies is that South Korea already is an advanced economy.  The country economically has caught up and now it is time for Korean culture to change to realize this.

What is really sad about this is that Ryu instead of being thanked for exposing this fraud nearly a decade ago was demonized and lost his job. Even after learning of the fraud the then Roh Moo-hyun administration tried to cover it up.  After the fraud could not be covered up, many Koreans still viewed Hwang as a national hero instead of the fraud that he was.

You can read more about Hwang’s fraud by digging back into the ROK Drop archives at the below links:

• Is this Why Dr. Hwang Woo-suk Committed Scientific Fraud?
• Korean Government Knew of Stem Cell Fraud
• Stem Cell Forgery Professor Steps Down from SNU
• Korean Scientist Admits to Faking Stem Cell Research