#@&!! TDY Fraud
I alluded earlier to a problem in the Arizona Air National Guard. It looks like the subject of this article was the reason.
It appears as if some of those assigned to the 214th Reconnaissance Squadron, Arizona Air National Guard and based in Tucson, were really enduring a hardship tour operating those remotely-piloted aircraft (RPAs).
How bad, you ask? As in drawing TDY allowances while living at home and flying RPA missions in support of deployed troops.
One of the indicted was an O6 – Colonel Gregg Davies. Ranks of the remaining personnel indicted were not immediately available.
Davies reportedly used his position “to circumvent measures that were supposed to prevent unauthorized temporary duty entitlements when military members are neither deployed nor away for training from their home.” The others apparently just raked in their unauthorized cash – to the tune of over $1 million total. Many individuals involved are thought to have pocketed upwards of $100,000.
I hope the justice system burns the hell out of these fools.
Category: "Teh Stoopid", Air Force, Crime, Military issues, National Guard, Reserve Issues
Looks like someone is going to the federal “pound you in the ass” lockup for a while. TDY fraud – what the hell were they thinking?
@ 1 HMCF(FMF)
I know, right?
Who in the HELL thinks about doing ANYTHING Illegal in the military because you are at least up against the UCMJ which has MANY catch all statutes AND then you ALSO open yourself up against the Civilian Legal System too boot.
/Dumb and Dumber……Dumbest.
I hate to pile on, but, these would be the same people eligible for the Distinguished Warfare Medal.
Just sayin…
It looks like we may have found some candidates for the force reduction program. Like nature, we can kill the stupid ones first. No great loss in the main.
What are the chances for a few of these Airmen for a PCS move to Leavenworth? Unaccompanied tour(except for their fellow unit thieves) and no TDY is authorized at the Disciplinary Barracks.
Garnishment of pay to pay back the TDY $$$$, to be sure… to be followed by an even-handed application of the UCMJ – not necessarily in that order. Hefty fines should follow.
Start with Gregg Davies, and work down the line.
If you are going to steal, steal so big that the take dwarfs your future lifetime earnings in a legitimate job. When most people steal, they get no more than a year or two worth of salary. Just doesn’t make sense.
TDY Fraud of all things…………………..I don’t understand people sometimes.
i hope they fry those pricks!
Play stupid games…
…Win stupid prizes.
Thud…thud…thud…stupidity like this makes you want to bang your head into the wall until you get tired of the squishy sounds.
Seriously, with all the controls I was under and hoops I had to jump through on TAD/TDY to get money AFTER I was done, to say nothing of before, and these guys are pulling crap like THIS?
Thieving sh1tbags are everywhere…these people were taking their cues from the political leadership in DC….should be no surprise they came up with this plan…what with our entitlement mentality…
Au contriare, Beretverde. TDY to the USDB and/or Fort Leavenworth isn’t bad – I actually went TDY to that installation 3 or 4 times over the years. It’s that “long tour/unaccompanied” with assignment to USDB that reportedly sucks the royal wazoo. (smile)
These look to be state charges – according to the article, the Federal prosecutor declined to prosecute and let the state handle the matter. (In fairness, that decision was made at an early stage when the magnitude of the fraud wasn’t actually known.) So they’re likely looking at state time vice Federal.
But I’m kinda wondering if these guys declared their proceeds as income for the years they were drawing unauthorized “TDY” $$$. That might pique the Federal authorities’ interest.
Well, Gov. Jan Brewer should have cleaned house with scorched earth mentality. After the Recruiter and his PII Scandal that locked out AZNG from the DEERS/PERSEC for about a month. Looks like she let up too soon. Starting firing Generals- no pensions- no honor: One or all of them turned a blind eye: Need a officer signature to buy off on this. Going to burn, I say burn from the top.
Dirt–can’t argue that. If you start with a few very senior officers and hang them from the Capitol building, the rest kinda get the picture they’re not above joining him.
Pour encourager les autres, or something like that.
#3 Beat me to it. This should be the death knell for that medal.
#5 Not likely. They were charged in civilian court by the state attorney general. Military can have at them later, but don’t hold your breath.
Dirt Dart, NHSparky: not sure about that. When the unit CO is involved, he can hide a lot of crap.
Col. Davies was apparently the CO of the 214th at the time this was going on. If he was the one signing off as Approving Official for the fraudulent claims, he could easily have kept higher HQ in the dark about this until someone got audited or complained. That’s particularly true if he was making sure his own claims (if any) looked good – those would likely be the only ones he couldn’t approve. (Typical practice is that the Approving Official can approve all TDY claims but his/her own. And in some fairly rare “corner cases”, an Approving Official can actually be authorized to approve their own TDY claims.)
AZ Guard has had too much crap in too short a time to ignore a pattern of conduct. They make true the burn “Nasty Guardsman” I work too damn hard to get that label.
Too we can’t make them go to the remotest, most dangerous COP in Afghanistan and go out on every dismounted patrol for the next year. I guess “pound them in the ass” prison will have to do.
WTF, WTF? Every time I go to a school, etc., I have to jump through a ton of hoops for DTS, etc., and these asswipes get right through?! Every one of them needs to be immolated while they’re hung!!
Personnel Reductions? DAMN RIGHT they need to start with turds like that!!
But before they’re thrown out, I say bust ’em down and make them come to work and receive “NO PAY DUE” LES’s until the money is paid back!!
Hondo- I was there (Ft. Leavenworth) in 1965…Looking at them from the outside, the prison walls scared me to be and do right.
Beretverde: the USDB (and even more the adjoining Federal prison) are indeed bad places. One absolutely wants to avoid a “long tour/unaccompanied” assignment at either – especially since those tend to be accompanied by reductions, forfeitures, and bad discharges. (smile)
I didn’t think the rest of Leavenworth itself was bad, though the weather royally sucks in the winter. Ended up TDY there during the winter a couple of times.
Godammit. I liked working with the AZ Guard; They always treated me ok when I needed stuff on short suspense (ranges, trucks, weapons, ect). There’s a lot of good, hardworking, honorable soldiers. These shitheads are giving the entire organization a bad name. I agree with NHSparky: Hang em by their unmentionables from the Copper Dome, and start with the oficers. Like I said before, and will say again: Officers deserve twice the punishment in command and control failures and systemic problems/illegalities. Officers all to the clink, enlisted dishonorable discharges. Every single commander investigated in the Air Wing responsible.
Scorched earth, GOV Brewer. I’ve seen you do it before. Go get em.
Lee Stein, an attorney for Davies, said his client was surprised by the criminal charges.
“Colonel Davies has served his country for over 31 years with dignity and honor fighting the Global War on Terror from Tucson,” Stein wrote in an e-mail.
From Tuscon
TDY travel is under more scrutiny now than ever before. Every DTS transaction is closely monitored, to the point of estimating to the penny at some commands and reporting on the difference once the vouchers are filed.
Anytime the Army Audit Agency or any other entity (IG, GAO, etc.) wants to do an audit, they usually pick TDY travel as one of the items. It’s just too easy to find stuff like this, yet folks insist on doing it. Much like trying to ship alcohol into theater, you will get caught if you falsify vouchers. It may not be now, but it will happen one day when a GS-09 Auditor at DFAS reviews your entire record upon retirement.
Isn’t this kind of thing what brought down COL Johnson and GEN Ward, among others? I always tell folks the government got Capone through tax evasion. This stuff has teeth, ladies and gentlemen.
As Hondo has rightly pointed out earlier, “The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine.”
Mind boggling. What a bunch of loons.
No surprise here.
#20 LOL seems like every time I submit to DTS some PFC kicks it back 5 times for random reasons – how in the hell did this happen?
Damn. I always thought that we citizen-Airmen have it pretty damn good in the ANG. Why go and mess everything up for yourselves, and probably everyone else, too? Oh, that’s right, because you live in a culture of moral decay and self-entitlement.
I mean, the colonel that was indited, makes just over $1,000 per UTA, assuming 10+ years TIS. Are things so bad, that you have to steal from your fellow Arizonians (Arizonans?). Besides, since it sounds like they are RPA flyboys, they are probably AGR. So, again I ask: Is active duty 0-6 pay so terrible, you have to resort to a life of crime? Despicable.
One can only hope that Lt. Col. Wilkerson (er, MAJOR Wilkerson) style Air Force justice isn’t served here.
-M
Mark F: probably not state funds involved, at least for the most part.
AGR status is generally Federal active duty (Title 32, if I recall correctly, vice Title 10), so Uncle Sam pays those salaries. The article also goes on to say that the alleged fraud dealt with claims regarding periods of Federal active duty for operational support. That would also be Federally-funded.
The fraud is a state crime also (fraud is still fraud, regardless of who owns the property), but Federal authorities reportedly declined to prosecute early before the full magnitude was known.
Hondo, gotchya. Thanks for the clarification.
Also, you did have it flipped- Title 32 are state orders, Title 10 would be Federal. I get them confused all the time, too.
I will say that on my base, the Massachusetts Military Reservation (as of about two months ago, it’s now called Joint Base- Cape Cod), the AGR positions seem to be generally Title 32.
However, in this case, I’m sure you’re right, since they’re directly supporting Federal ops, they would probably be Title 10.
Regardless of the type of orders, though, I think my original comment stands- These individuals are despicable. The ANG, and the National Guard in general has come along way in the past decade. Via the War on Terror, the NG/ANG established themselves as a viable, efficient, and professional fighting force/force multiplier. It’s these assholes that chip away at this hard-earned reputation. Civilians won’t care what type of orders these scumbags were on- they will simply link them with the ANG.
Mark F: the AGR program includes both Guard and Reserve personnel. Orders to active duty under the AGR program can be either Title 10 or Title 32.
I believe Full Time National Guard Duty (FTNGD) orders are those that are funded under Title 32, and the others are funded under Title 10. A few TAR orders pertaining to the Coast Guard funded under Title 14 might conceivably support the AGR program as well if the individual is involved with training the ARNG or ANG. However, the US Navy/USMC/USCG don’t have a “national guard” component (and thus an AGR program) per se. They therefore call their similar program TAR – Traning and Administration of Reserves.
Title 10 orders (and Title 14 orders, if any support the AGR program) are unambiguously Federal service. Not sure about Title 32 orders; you may well be correct in saying that is state vice Federal duty.
How did the budget bean counters not notice the excessive TDY expenditures ? When I was an OIC of a unit that did extensive travel, we had to build all of our TDYs into the annual budget and not only have an AO approve the travel, but we’re required to audit each TDY voucher being paid for accuracy.
Someone from HQ should have noticed these people traveling without requirement.
NavCWORet: my guess – and this is only a guess – is that the TDY expenses were being paid out of a central contingency-support account at HQ AF (or elsewhere), but were being approved locally by the unit CO. That would “hide” these expenses among a much larger group.
The amounts involved aren’t all that excessive. For 20 people, per diem for an extended stay adds up pretty quickly.
Per diem (lodging plus M&IE) for Tucson ranged from around $130 to $160 per day in FY2012, depending on the season. For an average, I’ll use $140/day.
Twenty people each getting 179 days per diem “on the economy” at those rates burns around $500k. So burning through $1.4M in a 3 year or so period of time is eminently plausible and wouldn’t really exactly raise eyebrows – IF the folks were actually there TDY. The investigation apparently found they seemed to be living at home and commuting instead.
@ 35 – From info from a couple of articles it was stated that members were using false addresses outside of Tucson to claim the TDY/traveling expenses, so from what I gather they were living/working in Tucson but claiming to come in from elsewhere to work.
Eggs: that was my impression as well. My explanation in 36 was intended to show that the expenses involved were plausible (and thus would “slide right through”) – particularly if they were billed against a relatively large centralized account paying contingency-support costs for multiple units.
Kinda hard to protect against this stuff if the guy running the show (and presumably certifying things) may have been involved. That’s what the articles imply.