1,000's of CA soldiers forced to repay enlistment bonuses a decade after going to war

Bazza

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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html

Short of troops to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan a decade ago, the California National Guard enticed thousands of soldiers with bonuses of $15,000 or more to reenlist and go to war.

Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back.
Nearly 10,000 soldiers, many of whom served multiple combat tours, have been ordered to repay large enlistment bonuses — and slapped with interest charges, wage garnishments and tax liens if they refuse — after audits revealed widespread overpayments by the California Guard at the height of the wars last decade.
Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.
Lawmakers condemn Pentagon effort to recover enlistment bonuses from California veterans
Doesn't seem fair, legal, patriotic, or the right thing to do morally.....the Army needs to fix this....:rolleyes:
 

Tidewater

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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html



Doesn't seem fair, legal, patriotic, or the right thing to do morally.....the Army needs to fix this....:rolleyes:
The SOP for the Defense Finance Accounting Service (DFAS) is, if there is any plausible excuse for taking money form the soldier, no matter how ludicrous and flimsy, take the money. If DFAS is wrong, the soldiers will produce the necessary documentation to prove it. The burden of proof is always on the soldier, however.
Sergeant Major Dan Pitzer (5th Special Forces Group) was held as a POW by the VC for four years. When released, the Army tried to take back four years of parachute duty pay.
The only way Dan Pitzer got to keep that money was he made the argument that the VC did not make aircraft available for him to jump from during his captivity so he could maintain his jump proficiency.
But the Army was going to take back four year's worth of jump pay if he had not fought back.
 

Bazza

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Thanks for that TW.....

The other part of this story that jumps out at me is that it took a decade for someone to realize there was an accounting mistake.

No wonder some people say the government can't be run like a business.....:rolleyes:
 

Tidewater

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Thanks for that TW.....

The other part of this story that jumps out at me is that it took a decade for someone to realize there was an accounting mistake.

No wonder some people say the government can't be run like a business.....:rolleyes:
I don't know what went on in this case. I read in the story that one of the Cal. Guard officers went to jail for fraud.
If I had to pick someone I would not mind getting overpaid by the general government, it would be soldiers who served in combat.
On the other hands, there are some slack-jawed booger-eating morons (including probably some on this board) who will advance the argument that "If you give these guys money they were not entitled to by law, then why not the [fill in your Democrat party constituency here]?"
 

OreBama

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This is why smart people don't trust the government. I saw on the news where one soldier was quoted as saying something to the effect of "if you give me back the years of life, I'll give you back your money".
 

selmaborntidefan

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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html



Doesn't seem fair, legal, patriotic, or the right thing to do morally.....the Army needs to fix this....:rolleyes:

Unfortunately, this is an all-too-common thing, and it gets worse. I personally witnessed a number of episodes while in the Air Force that left a really bad taste in my mouth overall. I'm curious as to how one instance turned out. When I was at Gitmo for 90 days during Operation Sea Signal, there was a new guy who came in about a week before I left. I had refused 'advanced pay,' figuring I'd get whatever I was entitled when I came back (my now ex was in base housing and I didn't need the money). This other dude - DFAS had no doubt paid him too much because he came in saying they had given him advance pay of something like $6,000. I knew even including my minimal separation pay that it was going to be maybe $1200 at most. That guy took his 'advance' and paid off his credit cards. Wish I'd kept in contact with him, heh heh.

No, and they do this. They screw up all the time. The only three certainties in life are death, taxes, and DFAS screwing up, and if you had a choice between trusting Trump or trusting DFAS, you pick Trump 100% of the time. I'm NOT exaggerating.

I knew another 19-year old airman from Washington state just out of high school (enlisted obviously). She deploys to the Middle East (Kuwait I think). They give her advance pay of $7,000 or some ridiculous sum. She pays off her car with it and goes about her business. Eventually - like maybe a year later - they discover the boo-boo and of course demand it back. She doesn't have it but tries to make arrangements. Keep in mind that as an E-2 in 1996 and living in the dorm, her take home pay was $980 per month.

They wound up court-martialing her for fraud and let her stay on active duty just long enough to repay it. Ok, fine. But they also sent her to a 21-day prison sentence and gave her a bad conduct discharge.

And they can do this stuff, folks.

They're about like the IRS or Mafia. Someone with some clout needs to step in and throw some debt forgiveness or something into one of these many bills. We're a trillion over anyway, what's a few more million?
 

81usaf92

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I had a break between my pre deployment training and deployment so I had to come back to home station. The military has to pay you the per diem of the base that you go to. Well our resource person either dorked up my travel voucher or information on my info on my GTC and I got payed 3,500 extra. Good thing I caught it and reported it, but it kinda stunk only getting paid $200 for 2 pay checks. But it happened to another person I knew but they didn't report it. The Air Force basically crucified them.

On the flip side if you are underpaid and report it, it probably won't get fixed for 3-7 months because of them "investigating" the issue. They are quick to take money but ungodly slow to pay it back

As for the enlistment bonuses... 60 minutes had a documentary last year about a massive amount of army recruiters promising bonuses that they had no authority to grant during 2001-2006 and 2009-present. The government has just got wind of it and is coming back with a vengeance. It sucks but expect more of this in the future.
 

CrimsonNagus

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Maybe I'm not understanding the whole situation but, accounting mistake or not, if you know they gave you more money then they should have isn't it wrong to take it? I made a mistake in my taxes a few years ago which caused us to get $500 extra in refunds. The easy thing to have done would have been to keep it and just hope they never found out. We didn't, I filed an amended return and sent them a check for $500 a few months later.

Like I said, maybe I don't understand this situation fully but, if you knowingly take something that isn't yours then you have to share a little of the blame, right? If your employer accidentally doubles one of your paychecks, are you going to rush out and spend the money or let them know someone screwed up?
 

TIDE-HSV

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Some of these cases are egregious. One guy got a bonus for signing up to be a radio operator for six years. Once he got deployed, they needed a body for another slot he was qualified for. Now, they want to be reimbursed because he didn't stay a radio operator for the agreed term. I don't know for certain, but I'd be willing to bet that the move from radio operator wasn't really a voluntary one...
 
Some of these cases are egregious. One guy got a bonus for signing up to be a radio operator for six years. Once he got deployed, they needed a body for another slot he was qualified for. Now, they want to be reimbursed because he didn't stay a radio operator for the agreed term. I don't know for certain, but I'd be willing to bet that the move from radio operator wasn't really a voluntary one...
I bet he was forced into transportation.


Sent from my iPhone 7 Plus [emoji336] using Tapatalk
 

crimsonaudio

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Maybe I'm not understanding the whole situation but, accounting mistake or not, if you know they gave you more money then they should have isn't it wrong to take it? I made a mistake in my taxes a few years ago which caused us to get $500 extra in refunds. The easy thing to have done would have been to keep it and just hope they never found out. We didn't, I filed an amended return and sent them a check for $500 a few months later.

Like I said, maybe I don't understand this situation fully but, if you knowingly take something that isn't yours then you have to share a little of the blame, right? If your employer accidentally doubles one of your paychecks, are you going to rush out and spend the money or let them know someone screwed up?
Seems like most of those who re-upped were unaware that the bonuses weren't approved.
 

selmaborntidefan

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Maybe I'm not understanding the whole situation but, accounting mistake or not, if you know they gave you more money then they should have isn't it wrong to take it? I made a mistake in my taxes a few years ago which caused us to get $500 extra in refunds. The easy thing to have done would have been to keep it and just hope they never found out. We didn't, I filed an amended return and sent them a check for $500 a few months later.

Like I said, maybe I don't understand this situation fully but, if you knowingly take something that isn't yours then you have to share a little of the blame, right? If your employer accidentally doubles one of your paychecks, are you going to rush out and spend the money or let them know someone screwed up?
Well - with all due respect - it honestly isn't as simple as you're saying here.

What usually happens is that some little schmo about 19 years old doesn't know what pay someone is supposed to get. He (or she) has filled out two dozen deployment orders already that day and they're all going to Iraq. Then one comes in that's going to Cuba, and the compensation is much different but the schmo doesn't even pay that much attention to detail (which is usually why that person is in finance in the first place).

And that have it line by line - Family Separation Allowance, Hazardous Duty Pay, etc. The very paperwork in your hands tells you "you're getting this." Now imagine that you're 19 years old yourself. (I'm always being given this 'excuse' when it's a college football player doing something he knows is against the law). You've never really been out on your own, and you spent 6-8-12 weeks in boot camp being told NOT TO QUESTION AUTHORITY.

It creates the perfect environment for that. And in some cases, the 'kids' here act responsibly. They've run up a little debt and want to get out so they don't think twice about it. Furthermore, in SOME cases when the person suggests that Finance has calculated wrongly, they're arbitrarily dismissed - and being both young and new to the service, what are they supposed to do?

And virtually every single case I ever saw of this involved a low-ranking enlisted person (E-4 or below), usually under 23.

The other little court martial thing involves 'misuse of a government credit card.' People get in all kinds of trouble over this (seemingly) mundane thing. You're traveling from Point A to Point B. You have a government issued credit card with a set limit (that you will get reimbursed when you get there). Your phone breaks en route and you buy a new I phone, knowing that since they're pretty generous with the reimbursement on travel that it's covered and you rationalize it because: a) you don't have another credit card; b) you're traveling across those big Western states out in the middle of BFE.

You get your money and pay it back IMMEDIATELY upon arrival, no big deal, right?

WRONG!!!

You have now committed fraud with 'misuse of a government credit card.' Never mind that one can reasonably argue the necessity of at least a phone for driving across New Mexico and Arizona (and most military posts are not exactly in downtown New York City).

I got around this by knowing I was moving and having plenty of money and plenty of credit card set aside so that I didn't have to use one. In fact, I never even had one. They actually told me I was going to get one at one time, and I told them I wasn't. Nothing happened.

So while what you're saying SOUNDS right to the civilian ear, there are plenty of reasons why it's not true.

Now in regards to re-enlistment bonsues......I got one when I re-upped in 1997. These are usually paid in increments (about 1/2 on the new start date and the rest divided into however many years you've re-enlisted for. So if you sign up for four years and get a $10,000 bonus FIRST they tax it at 28%. That puts you down to $7200. Then you might get about half of that ($3600) on the date your new enlistment starts. And the other $3600 would be divided over the next three years on the anniversary of your enlistment.

However - I DON'T PERSONALLY KNOW how this might affect WAR re-enlistment bonuses. It may be more complicated, probably is. Throw in things like promotions, travel pay, hazardous duty pay, family separation allowance, and all the other things and it is not all that difficult to see how a person even with the best of intentions (particularly if life hits them hard) might be misled.

And the thing is....since these soldiers likely all collect SOME level of VA disability, it is VERY EASY for the government to take it back.

You simply withold their monthly check until it's paid off.

I draw $1227 per month for a 60% disability. That would be paid off in a year. But this whole thing is still egregious, particularly when we're throwing money at everything else.
 

81usaf92

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Maybe I'm not understanding the whole situation but, accounting mistake or not, if you know they gave you more money then they should have isn't it wrong to take it? I made a mistake in my taxes a few years ago which caused us to get $500 extra in refunds. The easy thing to have done would have been to keep it and just hope they never found out. We didn't, I filed an amended return and sent them a check for $500 a few months later.

Like I said, maybe I don't understand this situation fully but, if you knowingly take something that isn't yours then you have to share a little of the blame, right? If your employer accidentally doubles one of your paychecks, are you going to rush out and spend the money or let them know someone screwed up?
Your missing the point. The army, and most other branches, have signing bonuses on enlistment and sometimes reenlistment. The army national guard, in particular, gave extraordinary amounts of money during the high times of the war. The whole idea is to give the incentive for some person struggling with the idea of going in or continuing to be in the military to choose to stay or go in. A recruiter's job is to make quotas in the critical mos's and to gain numbers during high times. The issue though is that a good amount of these recruiters were giving out bonuses that they had no authority of giving out. The army didn't really start investigating it until recently because the force was healthy for the time. What they have done recently is gone after the recruiters that are still in and tried to recollect the money that was not on good authority given. Basically it's a "thanks for your service, but here is what you owe me for all the benefits I provided you" kinda thing. This is probably the first of many instances of this happening, so expect this more often
 

92tide

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Your missing the point. The army, and most other branches, have signing bonuses on enlistment and sometimes reenlistment. The army national guard, in particular, gave extraordinary amounts of money during the high times of the war. The whole idea is to give the incentive for some person struggling with the idea of going in or continuing to be in the military to choose to stay or go in. A recruiter's job is to make quotas in the critical mos's and to gain numbers during high times. The issue though is that a good amount of these recruiters were giving out bonuses that they had no authority of giving out. The army didn't really start investigating it until recently because the force was healthy for the time. What they have done recently is gone after the recruiters that are still in and tried to recollect the money that was not on good authority given. Basically it's a "thanks for your service, but here is what you owe me for all the benefits I provided you" kinda thing. This is probably the first of many instances of this happening, so expect this more often
i think it is the recruiters that should be paying back the money, not the soldiers
 

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