Vet’s “sleazy” legal scheme nets $4 million
Andy11M and Chief Tango send us a link to the Washington Post which reports that an unnamed veteran and his wife used a “sleazy scheme” to rake in millions of dollars from the Army, but apparently, it was legal and there’s nothing the Army can do about it;
The veteran, described as a retired sergeant, and his wife set up a fake website — officialarmy.com — to gather the names of potential recruits, and then turned those names over to the service for financial rewards totaling $3.845 million, she said.
“I am absolutely disgusted,” said McCaskill in a news release. “This is a staggering exploitation of public trust, of the brave men and women who volunteer to serve in the Army, and of taxpayer dollars. It’s past time for the Department of Defense to take a hard look at the people who perpetrated and approved this scheme, and for the Recruiting Command to put in place policies to better safeguard against future recruiting schemes.”
I guess that makes all of those others who are going to jail for manipulating the recruiting bonus system look pretty stupid, doesn’t it?
McCaskill and Army officials disclosed a widespread scandal centered on its recruiting practices last year, saying at the time that they were investigating the actions of more than 1,200 people suspected of collecting more than $29 million fraudulently. In that case, the National Guard Recruiting Assistance Program was involved. In this case, the Army’s Referral Bonus Program to recruit active-duty soldiers was used, McCaskill alleged. It offered $2,000 for each recruit who eventually enlisted.
Basically, all they did was create a cold call leads list for Army recruiters and they got paid for it. Yeah, it should be illegal, but apparently it wasn’t. Whose fault was that?
Category: Army News
I agree, Jonn. Legal – but sleazy as hell.
Just because something is legal doesn’t make it the correct thing to do.
When this program first came out I immediately thought that it was wide-open for abuse. I’m not as devious as many, so if it was obvious to me, it should have been obvious to others as well. So these folks found a way to game the system, legally, for millions. I almost feel sorry for the poor schlubs who wound up with criminal records over a few thousand bucks.
The whole program smells almost like a sting operation. Again, it should have been obvious that people were going to try to game the system; it’s as if the government said “here’s some money for the taking – come on, you know you want it!” – and then busted people when they did what they were practically invited to do.
So…they provided a service for the Army and got paid. Welcome to capitalism.
Perhaps there’s some detail or other that I’m missing. If there is, please fill me in. That said, I honestly cannot see what is so wrong about people getting paid to help the Army meet recruiting goals. The Army got its bodies, the couple got paid for their work; everyone wins.
I suppose the real question is ‘Did the Army get the most bang for its buck?’ If it did, good deal. If not, that’s the Army’s problem.
Capitalism is a sleazy business. Stuff like this happens every day in capitalism. Just look at Wall Street – you see these deals happening all the time. Would you rather have socialism?
The Army seems to have benefited from these new recruits. The retired Sergeant seems to have benefited from that cash. So, please educate me – what, exactly, is the issue?
I apologise if I seem arrogant here; I really am trying to understand. All I see is a business deal. That said, many of you see something more sinister. If you could explain what, exactly, is so ‘sleazy’ about what was apparently a business transaction that seems to have worked out well for all parties involved, I would like to hear it.
I’m totally in agreement with you.
Sometimes there seems to be a knee jerk reaction to things around here.
I don’t see how this is any sleazier than other people that were smart enough to take advantage of business opportunities.
No rules were broken, and no one forced these recruits to sign the dotted line with a gun pointing to their head.
At my work place there’s a $1000 bonus if you refer someone and they get hired.
I’m sure the recruiters (a thankless and stressful job) appreciated the leads.
Perhaps some are more upset that a resourceful couple found a way to make a lot of extra money.
Well, if they hadn’t used a business name that implied either (a) official Army endorsement, or (b) that they were acting on behalf of the Army, I might agree with you both.
However, the fact is that they did exactly that. Their website was “officialarmy.com”. So yeah, I have a problem with this stunt.
As I said previously: what they did was legal – but sleazy as hell.
The potential recruits using the website most have know this was not a government website. Because government websites end with .gov not .com. And the youth in this country are pretty computer savvy. The problem was the Army paying too much for some cheap info. On a program they developed. I’m pissed because we have to pay it. Army misused our money. Can’t blame those that provided a service for a fee. This program was not a secret.
Yeah, JimW – I guess “www.goarmy.com” can’t possibly be one of the US Army’s official web sites because it’s in the “.com” domain.
My point is that government agencies do on occasion use other than “.gov” or “.mil” sites for official purposes. And even though computer savvy, 17 and 18 year old kids are often naive as hell.
IMO, this was deliberate misdirection and deception. That’s what I have a problem with, not the fact that the guy and his wife managed to score some easy $$$.
I see your points, but surely there must have been a disclaimer somewhere that it wasn’t an official site.
But even at that, to me it doesn’t make much of a difference. The provided a service of giving names to recruiters, don’t see anything wrong with that.
Now I learn something new today about domain names. When I enlisted slide rules were Hi tech, and no need for bonuses to recruit anyone. Just watch your mail box for a draft notice. So Why the need for bonuses today?. This was a dumb ass thing for the Army to do. They should offer that money to recruits….
Yeah, what’s next… an article about how we paid XX million dollars in Afghanistan for the villagers to go out and hand cut terraces, only to have most of that money went to the Taliban? How much was spent on that unfinished runway at Sharana? Glad to know McCaskill gets outraged over 29 million (yeah right, drama much?), but that’s chump change.
Who’s fault is it? LEADERSHIP.
A few years back, I was sitting at home and my wife’s cell phone rang? She looked at it and said “wrong number” and set it back down. I generally answer those to let people know that they’ve got the wrong number (and I hate when they keep redialling), she doesn’t care enough to tell them they’ve got the wrong number. So I answer it for her.
Turns out, it was some 18 year old kid in Texas who was trying to call the Air Force and said he got the phone number from their website. I chuckled and explained to the kid that it was my wife’s phone, but no hard feelings, and told him I wished him luck because I had enjoyed my time working with the Air Force folks while I was in the Army. So he asks me a few questions (and advice as to how to actually get ahold of a recruiter) so I spent some time explaining the process, and how to find his local recruiter. Little did I know that I could have made $2k referring the kid. No biggie. I hope he made it, seemed like he had his head on straight.
Well, their moral compass may not point due north, but
a) The couple made $3.5 million, not the $29 million mentioned.
b) Most large companies pay recruiting bonuses for various hard-to-fill jobs. I have heard of some paying $5000 or more for really tough ones.
c) Most companies have taken precautions to copyright similar-sounding website names to their official ones as a way to deter cybersquatters and folks who would demand cash to stop using, say maybe thisainthel.net.
My compass must be broke, too… I have a hard time summoning up too much outrage over this. Someone left a big hole open and they walked through it.I’m more interested in that other $25.5 million they say paid out – where did it go?
Ya, I’m pretty much with Tman, JimW, Semper Idem, and David here. I can’t find anything to be upset about in this, it’s classic Capitalism at work.
I’m not mad at the people that capitalized on this situation. I’m mad at the people that made the situation available to them
I can’t agree, Jabatam. I’m angry at both groups.
The majority of the people who profited from referral bonus schemes did so via criminal conspiracy and outright fraud (e.g., a kickback scheme). While the program was poorly-designed and made that easy, no one forced them to break the law. Crime has consequences, as many found out the hard way.
The couple here draw my ire for a different reason. They found a totally legal loophole, and exploited it. I have no ill will to them on that score; my anger about that is directed at whoever set the program up and/or approved the payments.
However, in doing that they IMO used deceptive means. I mean, really – “officialarmy.com” as a domain name, when the Army’s official web site is “goarmy.com”? I simply don’t believe that was anything but intentional deception. And I have an issue with any merchant that uses deception to make a buck.
Oooo! They used ‘deceptive means’!
You mean like damned near 90% of all advertising in the world, regardless of product? You know, that practice that has made marketing one of the most profitable businesses in the world?
Ya, sorry, still can’t find a reason to be mad at the couple for doing it.
These folks “pushed the envelope” far more than usual. Because of a couple of legal quirks, they skated.
Here’s a web cache of their home page in June 2009.
https://web.archive.org/web/20081112075853/https://officialarmy.com/
It appears to me that they are intentionally attempting to mimic an official US Army site in their site’s design as well as in its name. They appear to have been soliciting individual’s PII while doing so, including SSN. I also don’t see any disclaimer that they’re not affiliated with the US Army.
And it was all legal, if unethical as hell.
US government works in general are not protected by copyright law. That’s probably the only reason these folks weren’t hit with a lawsuit over their activities regarding mimicing a US Army site; had they done this to the website of a large commercial firm, I think we’d have seen a far different story. Similarly, the Federal Privacy Act in general doesn’t apply to private entities. So unless forbidden by the law in the state in which they lived and/or located their servers, that was legal too.
Legal? Yes. Deceptive? You betcha. Unethical? Hell yes.
In most cases, another private business pulling this stunt would have ended up in court. Here, they managed to find a legal way to skate around the law via what was IMO blatant and unethical – but legal – deception.
YMMV. Obviously you’re OK with what these folks did. I’m not.
“In most cases, another private business pulling this stunt would have ended up in court.”
Not hardly, but if makes your wounded sensabilities feel better to think so, hey, knock yourself out.
Like I said before, I can find the equal to this, for degrees of ‘deception’ or ‘unethical-ness’, on t.v. or in a magazine in about 10 seconds flat. There is ZERO difference between this and the vast majority of advertising everyone gets assaulted with daily.
Caveat Emptor
Really? Please post a link to a commercial firm (1) pretending to be another entity with no disclaimer, while (2) soliciting PII protected under the Federal Privacy Act. Or provide a citation to a scanned copy of a recent (2009 or later) print article or advertisement doing likewise. YouTube clip of a TV ad would also be acceptable.
Hmmm, narrowing the parameters to try and win support for an untenable position. Nice.
I lack the time or inclination to prove the obvious to you based on your previous assertions, let alone the more closely defined conditions you now want to impose based on your being caught painting with too broad of a brush to begin with.
Let’s make it real simple-
Your words “And it was all legal”
Also your words “In most cases, another private business pulling this stunt would have ended up in court.”
So which is it Hondo? 🙂
As for there being no disclaimer on their site, apparently you didn’t look hard enough, I found it pretty quick just glancing at the link you provided.
Cheers 🙂
This.
This is what happens when politicians (of any caliber, stripe, or party) get involved with money greater then to pay for a taxi ride or a dinner.
It’s called “The Law of Unintended Consequences” meets truck-sized loophole.
I spent four years as an Air Force recruiter in Hattiesburg, Mississippi; just down the road from Camp Shelby. I regularly had Army/National Guard soldiers bring me potential applicants(often relatives) often with the line, “I don’t want them in the Army…I want them in the Air Force.” They then wanted to know how much money they would get for bringing them to my office. When I told them the Air Force didn’t pay cash for referrals…they often (but not always) took their friend/relative back to the Army and/or National Guard recruiter. My favorite was the hispanic Army Captain who pulled up to my office in a pickup truck packed with Mexican day laborers who always hung out in front of the Home Depot across the street. He wanted to know how long it would take to get paid….my office partner and I strung him along for a few minutes before we finally couldn’t hold it together any longer and politely implied that the Captain was lacking common sense.
Does a non-CPO non-lawyer that misrepresents clients at Social Security hearings make 3.8 million dollars a year? Just curious. Think of all the black call girls and avgas that could have bought. I bet it brings a tear to your eye huh Birdbath.
… or maybe you shoved the catheter up too far. Again.
Not possible. Even if I drop kicked that fucker past his kidneys.
It’s one of those “told ya so” kind of moments here. No, I am no more pleased by this than is anyone else, especially the scale of it. However, whenever an entity offers special bonuses for doing a job, especially jobs which someone has already been paid to do, the door is open for folks to figure out ways to excel at getting that bonus, or extra pay, or whatever.
Rewarding people who do ordinary, commonly decent things? Yeah, we see it every day. It’s not pretty.
These turds have All-Points Logistics potential…..
I wonder if Phil Monkress has reached out to them yet?
But then again, maybe they are already on the payroll.
With all of those contracts drying up, Commander Phil Monkress and his senior (and felonious) staff at All-Points Logistics may be diversifying, if you will.
So what you’re saying is, they did something “legal” and got paid big bucks for it?
Geeze, next thing you’ll tell me we will be giving Soldiers awards for calling the Pentagon to dime out other Soldiers when they do shit wrong instead of handling it at the lowest level….
There were all kinds of things wrong with this program. If you look at it like a video game (WoW reference for Mark here), you have the “power players” who run thru everything in about 3 days and are max level, have millions in resources and assets and others are still on level 10. Are they doing something wrong? Nope, they are focusing full force on getting to the top as quick as possible and exploiting every advantage within the rules.
This is the same thing. These two were “power players” who made shit happen and how many recruits did they bring in doing that? Enough to pay them almost 3 million dollars. that’s a lot of quotas for recruiters helping them so they don’t get a bad NCOER.
At the same time, this is the same program that was started back when some dipshit in the Pentagon thought “well, if we put MORE recruiters on the streets, that will automatically equal MORE recruits!” Which failed miserably.
More recruiters? Did that just end up being more recruiters rolling a doughnut at the end of the month because they were all fighting over the same limited pool of eligible recruits?
Government “free” money?
What could possibly go wrong?
Think All-Points Logistics.
I just happy that the Sugar went to a veteran and not some over-credentialed leftwing gasbag lobbyist.
Sergeants are devious and bear watching. I know, I was one.
As a former Army Recruiter from the late ’80’s, I would have LOVED to had a good lead list given to me. I, ahem, heard about how happy a recruiting station was to get a stolen school roster from an enlistee at the school. ALL 4 years of current students was there, so it lasted for 3 more years in the office, or so I’ve heard….
stories like this always remind me of the “Cobra Effect” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_effect
Thus far, at least, the comments do not reflect any animus toward the couple. My reaction to the story was to chuckle and then to say, “Damn. Wish I had done that.” I wish the couple well. A few mil supplements military NCO retirement nicely.
Yep. 🙂
Admittedly Micky D’s doesn’t pretend to be Burger King… but if you want examples of deceptive advertising, compare the advertising pictures with ANY fast food sandwich. And that is billions of dollars in annual sales.
Your first sentence is the key, David. McD doesn’t outright pretend to be BK precisely because they know BK would take them to court – and win big damages. The Federal government in general cannot do that when someone mimics a government website. Federal government products are in general not covered under copyright laws. Only a relatively small number of products (in general, official seals) are protected against unauthorized use, and these are protected by different parts of Federal law.
Military offense often redirects an attack, but not often onto their own soldiers. For seven years G-RAP, a recruitment program for the Army National Guard, was touted as a great success. Indeed, 150,000 new recruits were enlisted. An Alabama printing and document packaging company called Docupak was awarded $500 million to promote, manage, administer and monitor G-RAP. In 2012, an Army Audit blasted the Army National Guard Command for awarding an illegal contract and Docupak for gross mismanagement. Facing serious allegations, Docupak and the top levels of the military searched for and found a scapegoat: the tens of thousands of soldiers who were incentivized to bring in new recruits. Suddenly, soldiers who had done nothing more than participate in an Army National Guard program, were facing criminal charges. The Guard Recruiting Assistance Program (G-RAP) was instituted as a no-bid contract to Docupak. Soldiers, families and retired military were leveraged to identify potential soldier recruits. Guardsmen were “encouraged” by their command to serve as “ambassadors” in an effort to boost enlistment during a time of lengthy deployments in two war zones. The ambassadors were called Recruiting Assistants (RAs). Serving as independent contractors for Docupak, they were paid $2000 for each successful enlistment. Becoming a recruiting assistant was easy. RAs took a quick online test: reviewing Docupak’s information input system and how to file taxes as a Docupak contractor….nothing more. The rules specified that recruiting assistants should interface with Guard recruiters who identified potential enlistees. Docupak required RAs to enter those potential enlistees’ personal data in the G-RAP system, including name, date of birth, social security number, and marital status. Following these directives would ultimately open all 108,000 recruiting assistants to investigation and prosecution for identity theft, fraud and other charges. In 2012, G-RAP was audited by the U.S, Army Audit Agency and was found to have been grossly mismanaged. Among the findings: organizational conflict of interest, no management controls at any level throughout the National Guard Bureau, no oversight of the contractor, and a contract that violated the anti-deficiency act. The Army Audit concluded that there was a breakdown in “sound… Read more »