Posted on 10/22/2016 7:15:19 PM PDT by Chode
Thousands in California, many of whom served in Iraq and Afghanistan, called on to return enlistment bonuses amid reported ‘widespread overpayments’
Thousands of soldiers in the California national guard, many of whom served active duty tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, are being asked to pay back large enlistment bonuses they received as much as 12 years ago.
The Los Angeles Times reported on Saturday that nearly 10,000 soldiers may be affected by the demands, after audits “revealed widespread overpayments by the California guard at the height of the wars last decade”.
Christopher Van Meter, a 42-year-old former army captain and Iraq veteran, told the Times he refinanced his home to pay $46,000 in bonus money and student loans which the army said he never should have received.
“These bonuses were used to keep people in,” Van Meter told the paper. “People like me just got screwed.”
In the mid-2000s, as wars continued in Afghanistan and Iraq, military officials throughout the US felt pressure to boost enrollment. At the peak of the simultaneous offensives, generous enlistment bonuses were one of the ways officials tried to solve the problem.
Overpayments occurred in every state during this period, according to the National Guard Bureau, the Pentagon agency that oversees state guard organizations. But payments were especially unwieldy in California, which is home to the country’s second-largest state guard.
In 2012, a former bonus and incentive manager for the California national guard, retired master sergeant Toni Jaffe, was jailed for 30 months for filing false claims.
In her guilty plea, the US attorney’s office for the central district of California said, Jaffe “admitted that she submitted claims to pay bonuses to members of the California national guard whom she knew were not eligible to receive the bonuses and to pay off officer’s loans, even though she knew the officers were ineligible for loan repayment”.
Rather than forgive the loans, the California state government embarked on an audit of more than 17,000 soldiers who received a combined 25,000 disbursements worth about $100m.
The audit process concluded last month, with roughly 9,700 current and retired soldiers having been told to repay some or all of their bonuses. The state has recovered more than $22m so far, the LA Times reported, but collections are likely to continue for several years.
In a class action suit filed in February, one of the affected guardsmen calls the affected soldiers “victims of one of the most egregious mass frauds in US military history”.
The plaintiff, Bryan Strother, alleges that the payments were laid out in binding contracts and that the statute of limitations for the state has long passed.
Strother has asked for all the money collected to be paid back, and for an injunction against the state collecting any more. The case is in federal court and a ruling is expected in January.
Even state guard officials acknowledged to the Times that the attempt to collect was unfair.
“At the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price,” Maj Gen Matthew Beevers, deputy commander of the California guard, told the Times. “We’d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts.
“We just can’t do it. We’d be breaking the law.”
Yes. Added.
thx...
What loans? Where are the loan agreements? What were the interest rates?
Liberals are a disgusting lot. That state government is hemorrhaging money (like sex change operations to inmates and free tuition for illegal for example)These bonus overages are a mere drop in the bucket that can be easily overlooked and written off for the good of the patriots who sacrificed so much to go to war. Put it up to a prop vote and see the reaction.
this is a move by the left to dispirit members of the military and try to make them lose faith in the institution
According to this three-year-old story, in addition to Jaffe, three captains pleaded guilty to fraud, paid restitution, and served two to four days in custody and got a year's probation. About 115 guard members, including 80 officers, also engaged in willful misconduct.
The story leads with the example of a married couple, a staff sergeant and a sergeant, who were promised $20,000 in student loan repayments, when they signed up in 2008. Payments have been suspended, and wages garnished.
But unless they were somehow in on the fraud, I believe they should get what they were promised and not have to repay a dime!
pretty much
not the safest of spaces...
If the National Guard members of California were sent to Iraq and Afghanistan, then they became members of the U.S. military under the jurisdiction of DOD.
Did California pay the enlistment bonuses, the US, or a combination of both?
Anyway, let them keep the money. They earned it.
I’m the father of an Army Reservist whose unit was activated in October, 2002, and my son and a few others of the 299th Engineers, MRB, became among the first US soldiers into Iraq on 3/20/2002. Now that unit is being sent back to Iraq.
If you pay these people to enlist, damn it, let them keep the money.
Another way California Marxists screw the military.
Ask the illegals to return their welfare payments first.
Then change/amend the law, retroactively to stop screwing our warriors.....Hillary loses 6 Billion and nobody bats an eye and they probably have maybe 10 Million that they "just have to retrieve"....
Obnoxious is what obnoxious does....
Obama handing out $18,000 to illegals
Obama’s List of Most Disrespectful Insults to the Military
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need to spread this far and wide ... and lay it at the feet of hillary / 0bama
make sure they know what they’re getting if they don’t vote Trump
The mistake was the Guard’s. The limitations time is over.
These mistakes should be forgiven the individual soldiers who almost to a man did not know the $ figure when they entered a reenlistment office to reenlist. They went by what they were told.
I would forgive the debts.
Thank God for DAV/Wounded Warrior, etc., but it's obnoxious that the vets need outside charities to be taken care of.
Trump would pay them himself.
If he did that, I think his numbers would surge like never before.
What would the total tab for this “mistake” amount to? A few million, at the very worst?
The Pentagon spends how many billions a year? I know there is no actual, known amount on Pentagon spending, but this would amount to a “rounding error” by any reckoning. Doesn’t matter if it’s California or the federal, they both deal with uniformed personnel.
Some brass hat needs to transfer the necessary funds and make this silly issue go away. Let them keep their money, for criminy sake.
100%
Amen
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