Christopher Praino signed a renunciation abandoning his compensation for the disabilities of the Veterans Department after receiving the order to become active in the fall of 2019.
In a letter, the VA confirmed that she would terminate her monthly payments of around $ 965 because, by law, he could not receive both VA services and an active salary in service.
But the agency did not completely stop payments. Instead, he sent various monthly amounts over the next three years, ranging from $ 0 to more than $ 2,000, according to Praino files.
“The VA has never stopped,” he said, “after the answer after the answer, call after the call, without an appointment after Walk-in.”
In 2023, despite the repeated efforts of Praino to rectify the inconsistent payments which should have ended years ago, the VA informed him in a letter that he owed nearly $ 68,000. That year, the government began to automatically scribble part of the money from its military pay checks, which it uses to support five children and his wife, leaving it in disastrous financial despair.
“No word can tell you the emotional, mental and physical sorrow that I have every day that deals with this,” he said. “It eats away at me.”
In a recent conference surveillance audience, focused on Why was it going to regularly overpayed veterans and then requests the moneyThe agency officials partially blamed the veterans for exorbitant errors, telling the legislators that some veterans have not declared eligibility changes that would have reduced their disability compensation or their monthly retirement payments.
But Praino and two other veterans told NBC News that they had informed the VA in a timely manner. However, the files show that the agency continued to pay them too much for months, sometimes years, before asking for money.
Delayed adjustments, which can ensure that veterans contract debts that change their lives, can indicate another operational deficit in weeks is after the officials have declared that the agency suppresses approximately $ 1 billion overpayed each year due to administrative errors and other factors.
The VA has paid too much of $ 5.1 billion in compensation for invalidity and in pension for the financial year 2021 at the financial year 2024, according to the representative Morgan Luttrell, R-Texas, who presides over the chamber’s sub-comity on the assistance to the disabled and commemorative affairs.
The question is recurrent and empire, told Luttrell to NBC News, even if the Trump administration Reduce billions of dollars in grants And reduces thousands of federal jobs In an attempt to cut what he considers waste and ineffectiveness in federal expenses.
“This is not the fault of the veterans,” said Luttrell. “It’s the system that fails.”
In a statement, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, said the agency, under the new management, “works hard to solve long -standing problems, such as billions of dollars a year in too many payments”.
Luttrell said that the problem of the overpayment is complex, largely from level of human error and an obsolete computer system which, according to him, does not allow to share the information between the local and national AV offices.
“You must make sure that the software is talking. You have to communicate the veterans. You have to move the actors inside the va accordingly, then you must make sure that the system is aligned as it should be,” he said. “This is such a complex problem to be solved.”
“The processes are broken”
In 2015, after the finalization of his divorce, the veteran Brent Aber said that he had gone to the local VA office in Akron, Ohio, to remove his ex-wife as a dependent.
“I thought, ok, everything is done,” he said.
Aber said he had the impression that he officially closed a difficult chapter of his life. But eight years later, another nightmare emerged when the VA debt management center sent him a letter, informing him that he had to reimburse more than $ 17,700.
Aber, who served in the navy and the army for a dozen years, said that he had called the VA to discover how he accumulated this debt. He told him that he was told that different computer systems will not communicate with each other, which means that dependent suppression may never have been recorded nationally and that his monthly payments had not decreased as they should have.
Kasperowicz, spokesperson for the VA, challenged the complaints filed by Aber and Luttrell on computer systems, claiming that the VA had a centralized complaint system since 2013 that “guarantees that the updated information is reflected” for each veteran. During the follow -up, Luttrell could not be joined to comment on the VA dispute.
Kasperowicz did not explain what happened in the case of Aber and said that the VA had no trace of his request for dependent change from 2015.
Aber said that he had spent more than a year fighting for recovery and claimed financial difficulties. But in May, the VA began to retain nearly $ 500 from its monthly compensation payments until the debt is authorized.
To compensate for the loss, Aber, who lost his two legs in a training accident and is now mainly bedridden, said that he had ceased to use a house cleaning service and mainly eat cheaper and microwave food.
“I provided all the documents at the time of divorce, but that did not seem to have any importance,” he said.
The 50 -year -old said that RAP recovery was hurting while he is fighting for medical care.
He said he had trouble with pain and intense swelling since he had been over -giving over his members about two years ago in the hope of recovering for prostheses.
While Berber said that his primary care doctor had referred him to an orthopedic surgeon with double amputation expertise, he said the AV had denied the reference.
Kasperowicz said that “the entire orthopedic section of the health system Va Northeast Ohio” and other health care providers have evaluated Aber and “all have agreed that there are no additional surgical options which would bring it pain relief or improved function”.
“The medical consensus is to continue amputees, physiotherapy, pain management and behavioral health treatments to respond to the complexity of its condition,” said Kasperowicz.
Aber said that the double battle he had led against the VA had left him frustrated and betrayed.
“I feel like I was completely hurting,” he said.
In Bonaire, in Georgia, the veteran John Mullens reported a change dependent in February after his 18 -year -old son became eligible for an educational advantage is separated which provides monthly payments to cover the cost of the school. According to the law, veterans cannot receive both advantages at the same time, which Mullens knew of his own research.
NBC News examined the files of his va portal, showing that he has applied for a dependent person on February 18. The complaint was assigned to a reviewer on February 19, according to the portal. And there was no other update before May, when Mullens received a letter from the VA, alerting him on double payments, which, according to VA, resulted in about $ 340 in too many payments each month.
“They did nothing with the information and continued to outdo me,” said Mullens, 55. “The processes are broken.”
Kasperowicz said that it was currently necessary an average of around 21 days for the dependent on the dependent and an average of around 91 days to add one.
Over nearly $ 1.4 billion too much too much in the 2021 dollars, Kasperowicz said that around $ 913 million was linked to dependent changes.
The AV does not follow the data showing the number of veterans in cases of too lively has really reported changes in time, said Kasperowicz.
Too much people sometimes extend for many years. In 2023, the VA temporarily suspended the collection of retirement debts for thousands of low-income veterans and their survivors after the agency has identified a problem with its income verification which led to too much cable between 2011 and 2022.
On May 14, Luttrell and other members of the Chamber’s subcommittee pressed those responsible to explain how the agency planned to solve the problem.
Nina Tann, executive director of the VA remuneration service, testified that the agency, which serves around 9.1 million people, has an “increased risk” of making inappropriate payments due to the large number of beneficiaries and the high amounts it retains.
Tann said the agency had taken measures to prevent, detect and correct the problem, in particular to be better in the notification of veterans that they must report the modifications.
Tann also said that the VA had set an administrative error in January which had caused double payments for around 15,000 veterans with dependents during the year 2024. The agency did not force these veterans to reimburse the money, she said.
Kasperowicz said that the VA does not seek to recover too much-payés during administrative errors, including problems related to Online classification platformare to blame.
But Praino, who owes nearly $ 68,000 after a re -resurgence, said it was difficult to prove that the AV made an administrative error.
“They will not admit any error,” said Praino, 42, sergeant of the first class of the army, which has been used full time in the National Guard since 2019.
The VA did not immediately comment on the case of Praino.
The VA has transferred the Praino debt to the Treasury Department, which informed Praino in a letter of December 2023 that he is required to retain up to 15% of his federal salary. The Treasury Department began to automatically garnish around $ 800 from its monthly pay checks in 2023, according to documents provided by Praino.
Praino, which is based in Georgia, now reports about $ 3,800 per month, which, according to him, barely covers the rent. With car payments, student loans and other expenses and invoices, Praino said he had accumulated his credit card with essential purchases such as food for his family.
Praino said he was suffering from a post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and traumatic brain injury after having served for the first time in the navy from 2001 to 2003 and then in the army.
“When you add a financial crisis to the mixture, and you continue to serve, which is always a high stress environment 24/7, my emotional state, my mental state, it is a wreck,” he said.
