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.
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
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]
