Thieves Swindle Disabled Veterans, Program

They survived the Nazis, the Viet Cong and the Taliban.   But hundreds of mentally disabled veterans suffered new wounds when the country they served put their checkbooks in the hands of scoundrels.
Gambling addicts, psychiatric cases and convicted criminals are among the thieves who have been handed control of disabled veterans' finances by the Veterans Affairs Department, a Hearst Newspapers investigation has found.

For decades, theft and fraud have plagued the fiduciary program, in which the VA appoints a family member or a stranger to manage money for veterans whom the government considers incapacitated. The magnitude and pace of those thefts have increased, despite VA promises of reform. Three of the largest scams — ranging from about $900,000 to $2 million — each persisted for 10 years or more before being discovered.

In the past six years, the VA has removed 467 fiduciaries for misuse of money, but only a fraction have faced criminal charges, a Hearst analysis of data from the VA's Office of the Inspector General shows. 

The government has never adequately tracked fiduciaries' thefts from brain-damaged or memory-impaired veterans. The inspector general's office says it conducted 315 fiduciary fraud investigations from October 1998 to March 2010, resulting in 132 arrests for thefts amounting to $7.4 million.

But a Hearst analysis of court records and documents obtained by freedom of information requests shows that the thieves' take since 1998 is more than $14.7 million — nearly twice the amount reported to Congress.

Full Article and Source:
Thieves Swindle Disabled Veterans, Program

See Also:
NASGA:  Veterans in Peril