{"id":67888,"date":"2016-09-10T09:36:01","date_gmt":"2016-09-10T13:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=67888"},"modified":"2016-09-10T09:36:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T13:36:01","slug":"eric-d-smith-pretend-vet-convicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67888","title":{"rendered":"Eric D. Smith; pretend vet convicted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>63-year-old Eric D. Smith was sentenced to four years and three months in prison with no possibility of parole this week. He also must pay back the $234,461 that he defrauded from the Veterans Affairs Department while he claimed to be a veteran from October 2012 until he was caught in April 2014, according to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/usao-wdmo\/pr\/independence-man-sentenced-receiving-undeserved-veterans-benefits\">Justice Department website<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>On Feb. 3, 2016, Smith pleaded guilty to one count of violating the False Claims Act and one count of student loan fraud. Smith admitted that he assumed the identity of another person, a veteran of the U.S. Navy, from October 2012 through April 2014. Smith fraudulently obtained a VA identification card and VA health care benefits utilizing this stolen identity.<\/p>\n<p>Smith fraudulently received approximately $15,459 in VA health care treatment, $12,956 in Veterans Retraining Assistance Program educational benefits and $656 in travel benefits from the Kansas City VA Medical Center.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/articles\/man-who-posed-as-navy-vet-gets-prison-term-for-military-benefits-fraud\">Military Times<\/a> says that wasn&#8217;t the first time nor was Missouri the only place;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>That restitution includes payments to additional agencies victimized by Smith when he engaged in similar fraud in Maryland, Georgia and Florida. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>These are the guys ahead of you in line at the VA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>63-year-old Eric D. Smith was sentenced to four years and three months in prison with no &hellip; <a title=\"Eric D. Smith; pretend vet convicted\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=67888\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Eric D. Smith; pretend vet convicted<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-67888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-veterans-affairs-department"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67888","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=67888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67888\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/41955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}