{"id":157724,"date":"2024-06-14T11:22:16","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T15:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=157724"},"modified":"2024-06-14T11:22:16","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T15:22:16","slug":"retired-soldier-sentenced-to-36-months-in-prison-for-defrauding-the-army","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=157724","title":{"rendered":"Retired soldier sentenced to 36 months in prison for defrauding the Army"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-157725\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B-333x333.jpg 333w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/Robots-and-electric-vehicles-in-traffic-20240325-B.jpg 1024w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Kevin Romulus Pelayo, together with his wife Cristine Furio Fredericks, illegally obtained over 800 Soldier Social Security numbers. From 2014 through 2020, these Social Security numbers were provided to the Army&#8217;s Mass Transportation Benefit Program. The Soldiers were not aware that they had been listed as using this program. The couple provided an illusion that they were running a rideshare program shuttling Soldiers to and from Fort Cavazos.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><strong>From the Army Times:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Kevin Romulus Pelayo, 45, and his wife Cristine Furio Fredericks, 40, illegally obtained social security numbers along with other identifying information of more than 800 soldiers and submitted them from 2014 to 2020 to the Army&#8217;s Mass Transportation Benefit Program without the soldiers&#8217; knowledge.<\/p>\n<p>Pelayo and Frederick&#8217;s company Soldier Vanpools, LLC, received millions of dollars in funds from the program over the course of those six years in exchange for the false claim that the soldiers were using their service for transportation to and from Fort Cavazos, Texas, according to court documents. According to Stars and Stripes, Pelayo was a platoon sergeant at Fort Cavazos.<\/p>\n<p>The Mass Transportation Benefit Program subsidizes transportation costs for soldiers and civilian employees.<\/p>\n<p>In 2019, Pelayo routinely paid a criminal confidant for personal information about hundreds of soldiers that he would then use to fraudulently enroll them in the Mass Transportation Benefit Program, according to court documents.<\/p>\n<p>Pelayo and Fredericks used their earnings to stockpile vans, SUVs, and other vehicles to create the illusion that their business was legitimate and engaged in the shepherding of large amounts of soldiers to and from the military base.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>Additional reading:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Ceder, R. (2024, June 12). A former sergeant&#8217;s rideshare scam cost the Army millions. <em>Army Times<\/em>. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.armytimes.com\/news\/your-army\/2024\/06\/12\/a-former-sergeants-rideshare-scam-cost-the-army-millions\/\">Link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kevin Romulus Pelayo, together with his wife Cristine Furio Fredericks, illegally obtained over 800 Soldier Social &hellip; <a title=\"Retired soldier sentenced to 36 months in prison for defrauding the Army\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=157724\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Retired soldier sentenced to 36 months in prison for defrauding the Army<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":661,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[209,359,232,185,226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-157724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-teh-stoopid","category-army","category-army-news","category-crime","category-veterans-in-the-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/661"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=157724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=157724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=157724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=157724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}