Posted on 10/29/2016 8:03:12 AM PDT by darkwing104
Approximately ten years after the Department of Defense offered hefty bonuses to provide an incentive for soldiers to re-enlist, the Pentagon is now demanding the recipients pay it back. The Los Angeles Times reported that only soldiers in certain jobs--intelligence, civil affairs and some noncommissioned officer posts--were entitled to receive bonuses. Investigators discovered rampart fraud and mismanagement by California National Guard officials who were gaming the system to meet enlistment targets.
California Nation Guard’s incentive manager, retired Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe, plead guilty to filing false claims of 15.2 million on behalf of her fellow California National Guard members. From the fall of 2007 to October 2009, MSGT Jaffe filed fictitious claims to pay bonuses to ineligible Guardsmen,
In an effort to recover the money, the Soldier Incentive Assistance Center performed an audit to determine which soldiers were eligible to receive enlistment bonus payments and which were not. Guilty or innocent of fraud didn’t matter in the recovery process; the Pentagon wants it money back. The Center determined of the 11,000 soldiers being audited only 1,100 had received unauthorized payments which must be paid back. An additional 5,400 soldiers were found to have missing paperwork or lack of documentation of eligibility and may have to pay back the money.
Publicity is the last thing Obama’s Defense Department needed. Once the story became public, political officials began putting pressure on the Pentagon to use its authority to waive repayments.
This week, Defense Secretary Ash Carter ordered the Defense Finance and Accounting Service to suspend its efforts to collect reimbursement from thousands of California National Guard members who received unauthorized bonuses. Secretary Carter also ordered a team headed by Acting Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Peter Levine to create a process to resolve the situation
(Excerpt) Read more at thecoachsteam.com ...
Make the bureacrats within DoD and NGB who failed in oversight pay it back.
Makes one wonder if retired Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe worked for Wells Fargo, then or later.
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