They illustrate the problem with the case of Joshua Bork who got an other-than-honorable discharge in less than 180 days and went straight to the VA and parlayed it into a 10% disability payment for some back pain. He kept going back until he found someone who jacked it up to 100%. All the while, he was teaching martial arts. <\/p>\n
Eventually, the Office of the Inspector General busted him but not until he had collected $89,278 from them. The Times reports some of the other criminals who have been busted;<\/p>\n
In 2007, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was a U.S. attorney, his office went after Atlantic City Mayor Bob Levy for faking a parachute injury and exaggerating his Army record from Vietnam to collect $24,683.<\/p>\n
Levy got probation.<\/p>\n
Navy veteran Ronnie Glenn Eddings, 43, of Fayetteville, N.C., is serving five years. He collected $893,739 feigning lower-limb paralysis from Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Army veteran Latonya Baldwin of Pensacola, who served in the Persian Gulf War, drew “unemployability” and other benefits totaling $205,402 long after she took a job as a schoolteacher. She’s doing 15 months.<\/p>\n
And, closer to home, Danny Crane of Riverview found his inspiration in Afghanistan and Iraq \u2014 not that he ever served in those countries.<\/p>\n
Crane, 33, obtained VA-paid medical care after falsely claiming he had been shot six times, had 24 plates in his face and had lost vision in his right eye, court records state. Crane altered discharge papers to wrongly credit himself with a Distinguished Flying Cross and two Purple Hearts.<\/p>\n
In real life, he was discharged for failure to adapt, and he never made it to the Middle East.<\/p>\n
[…]<\/p>\n
Last year, the VA’s Office of Inspector General opened 199 stolen valor cases and arrested 144 people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And yet, they haven’t busted Joseph Cryer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Tampa Bay Times writes about the fraud with which the Department of Veterans Affairs deals … Stolen Valor fraud<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45173","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=45173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45173\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/45174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=45173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=45173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=45173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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