Recruiting Gone Wrong

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According to Tom Vanden Brook of USA TODAY in a story entitled, "Recruiting fraud, kickback scandal rocks Army",

Fraudulent payments total in the "tens of millions," with one soldier allegedly pocketing $275,000 in illegal kickbacks, according to documents obtained by USA TODAY. At least four others made more than $100,000 each.

And this;

An Army audit found that 1,200 recruiters had received payments that were potentially fraudulent, and another 2,000 recruiting assistants had received questionable payments. More than 200 officers remain under investigation, McCaskill said. As of January, there were 555 active investigations involving 840 people, she said.

In all, as many as 100,000 soldiers will have to be screened to determine whether they scammed the system, she said.

"Frankly, a halfway sophisticated high school student could have seen ability to commit fraud here," McCaskill said.

Sad.

I think it was sometime late in 2004, we, the senior enlisted leadership made up of members of the Career Recruiting Force at Navy Recruiting Command, on many occasions, sat in a room with our Naval Reserve counterparts. We were discussing the best way forward for the merger of the active and Naval Reserve recruiting commands. I remember that during one such meeting a question, the question of, should we, recruiting command, be hiring civilian recruiters who would be paid a bounty, and also be paying referral bonuses for recruits -- the uniformed recruiter was not supposed to see any additional funds beyond their Special Duty Allowance Pay (SDAP).

The question was very quickly dismissed, with most us almost laughing out loud, and for the very reasons that are plaguing the news today -- because the potential for fraud was just too great.

The Army needed to do something, they were hurting -- they were trying some new "pilot program", it seemed, just about every month. Those programs would allow otherwise ineligible folks to enlist. Those applicants would be tracked through their enlistment to determine if that factor of eligibility should be modified. This stuff isn't new, nor is it exclusive to the Army.

If the investigations prove wrongdoing, this latest scandal is a pilot program gone very wrong. Sadly, that program should never have been started in the first place. If consulted, I have a hard time believing that the Army's senior enlisted leadership didn't voice the same concerns we did -- the potential for fraud was just too obvious.

The Navy has never offered bounties, and to the Navy's credit has taken some pretty innovative steps over the years to help curb fraud, but the Navy has done similar things, pilot programs, when times were tough; in addition to adjusting enlistment bonuses upward for hard to fill programs and ratings, anything from height/weight to education standards would be tweaked over time to allow more applicants to fit.

The minimum ASVAB score, in the past, has also been adjusted up and down. I remember a time when a person with a GED with a minimum of 38QT was allowed to join the Navy. I also recall when a person with a 24QT and Tier I education could join the Navy. We have been modifying eligibility requirements to meet recruiting's needs since the beginning of time. But that is becoming more difficult to do.

As our pay and benefits meet with greater scrutiny, those who receive them will have to fit the mold of what the public and politicians think deserve said pay and benefits. It isn't surprising to read a government report on the subject that says something like, "their pay is above that of a civilian of similar education and station." Maybe that is why nobody really blinked an eye when the base pay raise for 2014 was actually less than what was mandated by title 37. A topic for another time. Anyway.

With the state of the current economy, many people are more open to the possibility of enlisting in the service, and I have covered why some folks are having a hard time getting in that may have found a much easier time previously. Compared to just a few years ago, it is difficult to get in now, heck, even the Army is restricting applicants they once coveted, but that door will open again in the future. Recruiting is a cyclical business.

Hopefully, in the future when the gates do open wide again, and pilot programs once again become a "normal", we weigh all of their potential effects, and not just consider the bottom line, the "butts on the bus" number.

As an aside, and just so there is no confusion, SDAP is not a "production" based award, it is paid to those in recruiting that hold a billet that is allowed to draw the pay. Recruiters get the monthly stipend whether they enlist someone or not.

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