The Army’s Recruiting-Fraud Problem

A trio of sen­at­ors grilled past and cur­rent Army of­fi­cials Tues­day over al­leged fraud in a pop­u­lar re­cruit­ing pro­gram.

“I ap­pre­ci­ate that re­cruit­ing is key to main­tain­ing our mil­it­ary strength “¦ but we have to make sure that we’re go­ing about it the right way.”¦ We can­not have pro­grams fly in the face of law,” Sen. Claire Mc­Caskill said.

The Mis­souri Demo­crat and Re­pub­lic­an Sens. Ron John­son and Kelly Ayotte ques­tioned the of­fi­cials dur­ing a Home­land Se­cur­ity Fin­an­cial and Con­tract­ing Over­sight Sub­com­mit­tee hear­ing.

In 2012, mil­it­ary of­fi­cials shut down a pop­u­lar re­cruit­ing ef­fort after an audit raised ques­tions about al­leged fraud. The Na­tion­al Guard’s Re­cruit­ing As­sist­ance Pro­gram was cre­ated to help the Guard meet re­cruit­ing ef­forts dur­ing the Ir­aq War. But of­fi­cials poin­ted to a lack of over­sight that left the pro­gram open to fraud, in­clud­ing, in some cases, re­cruit­ment as­sist­ants en­list­ing some who already planned on join­ing the Army.

“We have to go back and look at all the people they re­cruited and find out, you were re­gistered un­der this re­cruit­er as­sist­ant. Did you give your per­son­al in­form­a­tion? Did you know he was re­gis­ter­ing you to come in­to the Na­tion­al Guard?’ ” Maj. Gen. Dav­id Quan­tock said when asked to give an ex­ample of how the al­leged fraud could oc­cur and how of­fi­cials in­vest­ig­ated it.

The Army’s Crim­in­al In­vest­ig­a­tion Com­mand is in­vest­ig­at­ing po­ten­tial crim­in­al activ­ity in the re­cruit­ing pro­gram, with 559 crim­in­al in­vest­ig­a­tions in­volving 1,219 in­di­vidu­als so far, ac­cord­ing Lt. Gen. Wil­li­am Grisoli, the dir­ect­or of Army staff, in a writ­ten state­ment. Of­fi­cials sus­pect that more than $29 mil­lion was il­leg­ally ob­tained.

Quan­tock said an­oth­er $66 mil­lion could have been fraud­u­lently ob­tained, but of­fi­cials are still in­vest­ig­at­ing.

The Army Na­tion­al Guard used the re­cruit­ing pro­gram from 2005 to 2012, the Army Re­serve used its pro­gram from 2007 to 2012, and the act­ive Army from 2008 to 2009. Though the pro­gram was used to help boost mil­it­ary re­cruit­ing, it was over­seen by Doc­u­pak, an Alabama-based con­tract­or.

In total the pro­gram cost $459.4 mil­lion: $408.7 mil­lion in the Army Na­tion­al Guard, $42.6 mil­lion in the Army Re­serve, and $7.9 mil­lion in the act­ive Army.

Quan­tock said that in 2007, two po­ten­tial cases of fraud in the re­cruit­ing as­sist­ance pro­gram were re­ferred, five cases in 2008, and an­oth­er two in 2009. But it wasn’t un­til 2010 — when 10 cases of po­ten­tial fraud were re­por­ted — that an of­fi­cial in Hunts­ville, Ala., began to ques­tion if there was a sys­tem­ic fail­ure in the pro­gram.

“There wasn’t really noth­ing that just jumped to our at­ten­tion and that would have dir­ectly said we’ve got a ma­jor prob­lem,” Quan­tock said, when asked by Mc­Caskill why an audit wasn’t ordered un­til 2011.

Though the re­cruit­ing pro­gram was can­celed in 2012, Mc­Caskill said the en­tire pro­gram could have been il­leg­al from the be­gin­ning.