Defrauding the VA

Why do these people think they’ll get away with their crimes against the Department of Veterans Affairs? Don’t they realize that they’re ultimately going to get caught?

Item: A Michigan woman defrauded the U.S. government of over $1.75 million in veterans benefits over five years. She submitted false applications for veterans’ programs such as pension and Aid and Attendance, then altered medical records to indicate that the veterans had qualifying conditions.

Then, unknown to the veterans, she had the money sent to her bank accounts. This criminal could get 20 years in the slammer. She deserves every day of it.

Item: A New York man was sentenced to 10-1/2 to 21 years for stealing money that was supposed to pay the rent of homeless veterans in his community, money that was gathered by nonprofit groups. The amount stolen wasn’t astronomical, but it was good enough to get four counts of grand larceny in the third degree and one count of scheme to defraud in the first degree. If that weren’t bad enough, he also stole lottery winnings from a disabled vet.

Item: A Massachusetts man not only defrauded the government, but what he did was dangerous: He failed to perform medical gas inspections at three VA facilities. These gasses include nitrous oxide, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, compressed air and oxygen to surgery, recovery and patient rooms. He invoiced for the work, which amounts to wire fraud. Now he’s going to get up to 20 years in prison.

Item: A VA employee working in IT cooked up a scheme to make fraudulent transactions on a government purchase card and have the proceeds sent to his own bank account. He then rigged the system to make it look like the VA had received the goods. For this he could get 10 years in prison.

Are they never going to learn? Most of these criminals just aren’t that smart.