When the number of former prisoners of war receiving benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs nearly doubled without explanation, an American survivor of the \u201cHanoi Hilton\u201d wanted answers.<\/p>\n
Mike McGrath, a Vietnam veteran who spent six years in captivity and now investigates false military claims, said his research points to impostors receiving Veterans Administration POW benefits.<\/p>\n
The VA offers a different explanation. Officials say the surge in POW figures stems from a confusing accounting system that may count the same veteran more than once across multiple conflicts.<\/p>\n
The department also acknowledged it does not track where a veteran was held captive.<\/p>\n
McGrath and a network of fellow POWs and researchers say they\u2019ve identified cases of veterans falsely claiming POW status to obtain benefits and prestige.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hurts and it\u2019s insulting because these claimants never spent a day in a prison in their life,\u201d McGrath said. \u201cThey\u2019ve never been tortured.\u201d<\/p>\n
The VA said it is not aware of any fraudulent claims, but officials did not address whether the agency has audited its POW rolls.<\/p>\n
\u201cVA conducts a thorough review of all POW claims to ensure service records and other dates align with their dates of service before delivering any benefits,\u201d VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz said in a statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yeah, right. A thorough review of forged documents before they rubber-stamp your claims. There’s a lot more at the source.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stars and Stripes has a story about a legitimate former POW who once more has pointed … VA POW claims questioned<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":98657,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[659,86,122,226,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-169752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fraud","category-veteran-health-care","category-veterans-in-politics","category-veterans-in-the-news","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169752","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\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169752"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169752\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/98657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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