{"id":78958,"date":"2018-04-18T09:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T13:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=78958"},"modified":"2018-04-18T08:26:49","modified_gmt":"2018-04-18T12:26:49","slug":"albert-s-poawui-pleads-guilty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=78958","title":{"rendered":"Albert S. Poawui pleads guilty to VA fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?attachment_id=78959\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-78959\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Albert-S.-Poawui-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-78959\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Albert-S.-Poawui-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Albert-S.-Poawui-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Albert-S.-Poawui-500x281.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/Albert-S.-Poawui.jpg 1388w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/local\/local-digest-maryland-man-pleads-guilty-in-va-bribery-scheme\/2018\/04\/16\/93372886-41a6-11e8-ad8f-27a8c409298b_story.html?utm_term=.44bea1634008\">Washington Post<\/a> reports that Albert S. Poawui pleaded guilty in court this week to defrauding the Veterans&#8217; Affairs Department of about $2.2 million in kickbacks;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In 2015, Poawui and a vocational counselor at VA agreed Poawui would pay the official a 7 percent cash kickback for VA payments to Atius, ostensibly for vocational training for disabled veterans, the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>Between 2015 and 2017, VA paid Atius more than $2.2 million, according to the statement, for inflated invoices that showed veterans attending classes for 32 hours per week when the program offered only six hours weekly. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>From the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/opa\/pr\/school-owner-pleads-guilty-2-million-bribery-scheme-involving-va-program-disabled-military\">Justice Department<\/a>;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Poawui admitted that the counselor and a second [Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (VR&#038;E) program] counselor approved payments to Atius without regard for the accuracy of necessary documentation in order to maximize the scheme\u2019s profits.  Between August 2015 and December 2017, Poawui and the scheme\u2019s other participants caused the VA to pay Atius approximately $2,217,259.44.  Poawui paid the first VR&#038;E counselor over $155,000 as part of the illicit bribery scheme.  These bribery payments were hand-delivered by Poawui or an Atius employee to the VR&#038;E counselor or the counselor\u2019s assistant, a veteran who was enrolled in the VR&#038;E program.<\/p>\n<p>Poawui also admitted that, with the knowing assistance of a second Atius employee, he made numerous false representations to the VA to enhance the scheme\u2019s profits.  For example, Poawui and the second employee certified to the VA that veterans attending Atius were enrolled in up to 32 hours of class per week, when in fact both knew that Atius offered a maximum of six weekly class hours.  After the VA initiated an administrative audit of Atius, Poawui, the VR&#038;E counselor and the Atius employee took steps to conceal the truth about earlier misrepresentations they had made to the VA.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Washington Post reports that Albert S. Poawui pleaded guilty in court this week to defrauding &hellip; <a title=\"Albert S. Poawui pleads guilty to VA fraud\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=78958\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Albert S. Poawui pleads guilty to VA fraud<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78959,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78958","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\/78958","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=78958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/78959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}