Real Punishment For Phony Veterans

From Strategy Page:

After years of pressure from veterans, the U.S. government is finally cracking down on phony veterans, particularly those who claim to have been POWs (Prisoners Of War) . Many of these fakes go even farther, and claim to be POWS when they claim disability payments from the Veterans Administration. There is a financial incentive to make the claim, but for years, this has resulted in an obvious pattern of fraud.

There are only 661 officially recognized U.S. POWs from the Vietnam period. About 550 of those are alive, but the VA says they are paying disability payments to 966 "Vietnam POWs." It got worse after the 1991 Gulf War. There were 21 officially recognized POWs during that conflict, but the VA is paying disability to 286 Gulf War POWs. For years, the VA claimed that they checked out the records before recognizing all these phony POW vets. Once recognized as a POW by the VA, you have several financial benefits (like not having to make copayments for medical services). Thus the fake POWs are also guilty of stealing money from the government. Veterans groups believe the VA resisted dealing with this obvious fraud because of unwillingness to deal with the resulting bad publicity.

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My Comment: Going after this type of fraud is long overdue.