Or even issue fake ones themselves and then lie.
Just to cover all the bases, it is also entirely possible that this was a crooked general.
I knew a senior chaplain once who secretly created his own “publishing house” which was only a post office box. He would then buy thousands of dollars of books from that publishing house using military funds. He would mail himself a few books and show them all around and claim to have distributed the entire order to the troops.
Gambling addict. It worked for a while until his assistant mentioned never seeing those cases of books. The guy almost became my supervisor, but was caught before we arrived at his installation.