{"id":160269,"date":"2024-08-23T08:50:35","date_gmt":"2024-08-23T12:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=160269"},"modified":"2024-08-23T08:50:35","modified_gmt":"2024-08-23T12:50:35","slug":"gold-star-family-scammer-gets-12-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=160269","title":{"rendered":"Gold Star Family Scammer Gets 12 Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\nCaz Craffy<\/em><\/p>\n

Ex-Army staffer who defrauded Gold Star families sentenced to 12 years<\/h3>\n

After a Washington Post investigation, authorities pursued counselor Caz Craffy and found he swindled millions from grieving military families.<\/em>
\nBy Alex Horton<\/strong><\/p>\n

A former Army financial counselor who siphoned millions of dollars from life insurance funds in a fraud scheme targeting Gold Star families was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison, prosecutors said, in a case officials described as a shocking abuse of grieving widows and children.<\/p>\n

Caz Craffy, 42, was an Army civilian employee responsible for providing basic financial guidance for Army families facing the loss of loved ones. But for years, he leveraged that position to illegally cultivate families into clients for a brokerage firm where he was moonlighting, urging them to invest their insurance payouts in high-risk trades with exorbitant commissions, The Washington Post found in an exclusive investigation ahead of his arrest last year.<\/p>\n

Two dozen families lost $3.7 million cumulatively, prosecutors said, netting Craffy $1.4 million in commissions in activity that the Army failed to detect. In some cases, Craffy was assigned to work with families he then victimized. In others, he scoured military databases to find additional people he could exploit, authorities said.<\/p>\n

Following Craffy\u2019s guilty plea for wire and securities fraud, the government asked a federal judge to sentence him 10 years in prison. The judge handed down a sentence of more than 12 years in prison<\/strong>, including the forfeiture of the commission money, prosecutors said in a news release.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n

Craffy was an Army Reserve major and civilian Army employee who used his position as a financial and benefits counselor to target families who received compensation after the duty-related deaths of their soldiers. Craffy illegally held positions with two separate financial investment firms and encouraged grieving families to invest their survivor benefits in accounts that he managed in his outside, private employment.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors say he convinced the families that the financial schemes he recommended were approved by the Army while lining his own pockets.<\/p>\n

BZ to the judge for ignoring the government sentencing recommendations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caz Craffy Ex-Army staffer who defrauded Gold Star families sentenced to 12 years After a Washington … Gold Star Family Scammer Gets 12 Years<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":160270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[185,708],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-gold-star"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160269","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\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/160270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}