[GreyFriar]

Kalamata,

I agree with Mears, relax on this one. On a quarterly basis having 44,000 “missing” or unaccounted for the entire Department of Defense can be explained as those who are in permanent change of station mode from one post and/or theater to another; on emergency leave or in the hospital; those on TDY less than 179 days or 89 days that do not count against a force cap total in a combat area since those people are there ‘temporarily’ and not on a full tour.

After 20 years active Army duty and 22 years as a Department of the Army civilian employee, I don’t think you have to worry about “Maybe they are just names on “paper”? And their paychecks are somehow making their way back to...the Clinton Foundation or....”

[Kalamata]

OK, thanks, GF.

I also feel better knowing Sec of Defense Mattis has his eye on it:

“Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis ordered a review of how personnel are counted in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“There’s a very strange accounting procedure I inherited … What I’m probably going to end up doing is out putting everyone into one thing and saying, ‘Here’s how many are really there now,’ ’’ Mattis said during a news conference in August.”

[texas booster]

According to a 2006 report by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, the average company loses 5 percent of its revenues annually to occupational frauds such as payroll fraud. The most prevalent type of payroll fraud is ghost employee schemes.

While I suspect that the 5% figure is rounded up, there will always be errors, even in HR.

So the Pentagon may presume that 5% of its 2,100,000 active duty and reserve personnel could be fraud, and take solace in the fact that only 44,000 were considered fraud instead of 105,000 potential fraudulent personnel.

The US government is just too big.