I can`t believe the California National Guard is doing this.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-national-guard-bonus-20161020-snap-story.html

While it seems some mistakes were made in California let's not overlook the Pentagon's role in this mess.

Seems to me California in this case had a slight resemblance to those Wells Fargo employees....

"Now the Pentagon is demanding the money back."

"Investigations have determined that lack of oversight allowed for widespread fraud and mismanagement by California Guard officials under pressure to meet enlistment targets.

"The problem offers a dark perspective on the Pentagon�s use of hefty cash incentives to fill its all-volunteer force during the longest era of warfare in the nation�s history"

"�At the end of the day, the soldiers ended up paying the largest price,� said Maj. Gen. Matthew Beevers, deputy commander of the California Guard. �We�d be more than happy to absolve these people of their debts. We just can�t do it. We�d be breaking the law.�"

There's more in the article.

Friggin' outrageous!

"Like other branches of service, the Guard used enlistment bonuses to entice more people to enter the ranks a decade ago during the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, California Guard officials were found guilty of mismanaging the program.

Indeed, eight current or former members of the California National Guard in 2014 were indicted on federal charges for fraudulently obtaining recruiting referral bonuses, according to The Associated Press."

Military.com Article

Unfortunately, the government will get its money back from the service members. They always do no matter who's at fault.

"Robert D�Andrea, a retired Army major and Iraq veteran, was told to return a $20,000 bonus he received in 2008 because auditors could not find a copy of the contract he says he signed"

C.Y.A. ..... good grief always keep a copy of a contract in a safe place

Please do not comment on my post. I do not wish this thread moved to PWEC, but I feel the need to voice my thought.

Quote:

Unfortunately, the government will get its money back from the service members. They always do no matter who's at fault.

Why, as a people, do we accept that the victim of a crime be held responsible. Corruption is not the fault of the victim. These people performed the service that was asked for the pay offered. The perpetrator of the crime was a member of the government. The government is asking it's victims to pay for it's own corruption.

If up sell pot for an illegal dealer and the dealer is busted, should you be required to reimburse the people who bought from you?


Admin, delete my post if it is PWEC, but please do not remove the thread. The story of what is being done to these people needs to be publicized.

Whoa. Nice to see you again Haggart! I thought you might have volunteered for the first manned expedition to Mars or something!

Panzer you old goat, lol !

Panzer you know me by now .... sometimes i hang around for a few ...then disappear for a few

I'm sensing another global tragedy approaching.
Seems you always appear just prior to those

I swear Murphy I did not ask that man to post this

It goes beyond that. Reserve and Guard members are having to "pay back" service connected disability if they got it while still in. Its all over the place right now. And before you burn CA guard over the fire, its Federal laws that are doing it. EI...Congress.

It must be a Guard thing, because I went through something similar, but weirder, in the Regular Army (RA).

I had some Reserve and ROTC time before I went RA, and there was a break in service, so when I sat down in finance as a Private some clerk rectified all of it and calculated what my Basic Paid Entry Date (BPED) was. The BPED determines one's longevity pay increases.

Except he screwed it up. He gave me six months more than I should have had. I didn't question his stubby pencil work (1987 was big on computer hype in the Army, but not much more than that), as I didn't know anything about the Army pay or personnel system at the time.

In the course of my 23 years in the RA my records had been reviewed many times, and nobody caught it.

After I retired, some spring butt did a recalculation.

They then went back from day one and figured out how much they had overpaid me by month in that six month window as I went over two years service, four years service, etc. It was laughably small amounts, especially starting out (six dollars, I think it was), but snowballed over 23 years it came to a little over 16,000 dollars - which they demanded be paid back in a lump sum.

Oh, horse sh*t.

After a couple of phone calls I got a hold of someone with their head in the right place who told me exactly how to appeal to have it vacated, as that money was long gone from the Federal Government's budget, there was absolutely no malfeasance on my part, and, most importantly, it was chicken sh*t bullsh*t.

The review panel was a bit shocked that they would dip all the way back to the Reagan administration to milk me, and sent me a nice letter saying that not only were they vacating the debt, but apologized for the whole matter in the first place.

The problem here is that they have proof that the money changed hands but no proof of why the money changed hands. SO unless these people can prove why they received the money it looks like they are involved in a corupt money transaction. They need to either prove that they received it legitimately via a contract or prove that they didnt receive it via bank transactions.

I dont think this story is as one sided as the report makes it seem. I wouldnt be surprised if some of this money paid out illegally. IE the bonus was only supposed to be 5k but they gave the guy 10k then kept 10k for themselves. (or something like that).

Awesome story Dart. I'm glad that worked out in your favor.

Not quite the same as having to pay back thousands and sometimes clerical errors occur (CA NG doesn't sound like an error though), but while I was in Afghanistan I received hostile fire pay. It was a "bonus" of about $225 a month. My unit transferred to Kuwait and they paid me another month of hostile fire pay (not authorized for that location) and about a year later they figured it out and took it all back in a lump sum out of my pay check, and only let me know a couple of weeks after they took it back. I hadn't even paid any attention to it at the time, I was busy doing deployment stuff, so it took me by surprise when my pay check came up short.

So unless you can contest it, the government always gets its money back.

you can certainly successfully contest many government actions against you but the key is to have the needed documentation and/or a good attorney skilled in Federal workforce matters

when are the guys in uniform gonna learn... they better start thinking about the 2nd Amendment and how to use it.

Oh and another thing... why not go after the thousands of 3rd world 'immigrants' who have been stealing city-state-federal free services and money every month for YEARS... nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo why do that when they are the dem's block voters and the repub's cheap labor... nooooooooooooooooo

This is currently in Community Hall. Save the political party stuff for PWEC.

Yeah, it's really tired.




The Jedi Master