{"id":73745,"date":"2017-08-02T09:00:57","date_gmt":"2017-08-02T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=73745"},"modified":"2017-08-01T17:07:11","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T21:07:11","slug":"mack-cole-jr-convicted-of-defrauding-va","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73745","title":{"rendered":"Mack Cole Jr.; convicted of defrauding VA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=73746\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-73746\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Mack-Cole-Jr.-300x256.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"256\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-73746\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Mack-Cole-Jr.-300x256.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Mack-Cole-Jr.-390x333.jpg 390w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Mack-Cole-Jr..jpg 444w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ksat.com\/news\/defenders\/army-vet-who-defrauded-va-shown-walking-in-doj-footage\">KSAT<\/a>, retired Master Sergeant Mack Cole Jr. was convicted in federal court of defrauding the Veterans&#8217; Affairs Department for more than seven years. Investigators took video of Cole mowing his lawn and walking around his home unassisted in spite of his claims that &#8220;he no longer had &#8220;any ability to walk&#8221; and &#8220;dreams of walking again.&#8221;&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>By misrepresenting the scope of his injuries, Cole was able to receive a higher level of benefits, adaptations to his home and durable medical equipment, according to the U.S. Attorney&#8217;s Office.<\/p>\n<p>Cole, a retired Army master sergeant, remains free on bond while awaiting sentencing in September.<\/p>\n<p>He faces up to 50 years in prison.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>According to the article, the VA has opened 111 investigations for fraud so far this year and they&#8217;ve recovered about $125 million in restitution and fines. It seems to me that it would be easier to weed out the fraudsters before they get a check &#8211; but that&#8217;s just me, I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to KSAT, retired Master Sergeant Mack Cole Jr. was convicted in federal court of defrauding &hellip; <a title=\"Mack Cole Jr.; convicted of defrauding VA\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=73745\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mack Cole Jr.; convicted of defrauding VA<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73745","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\/73745","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=73745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/73746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=73745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=73745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=73745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}