Yoder veteran victim of benefits scam

By Andrew Brosig
Torrington Telegram
Via Wyoming News Exchange
 
TORRINGTON — Louis Redmond found himself in a quandary in October when his regular benefits check from the Veterans Administration didn’t show up in his bank account as expected. 
Classified as 100 percent disabled, Redmond lives on a fixed income, half of which is those monthly checks from the VA. He was still trying to figure out what he was going to do when he was contacted by the agency, asking when he’d decided to change his banking information for where the funds were to be deposited. 
Redmond realized he had been hacked. More specifically, someone had hacked his personal account with the eBenefits program – a joint effort of the VA and the Department of Defense to provide a single access point for benefits information to soldiers, veterans and their dependents. Someone – Redmond still doesn’t know whom – had entered his account and changed the routing information so his checks were sent to banks across the country they could access but Redmond could not. 
“When I discussed it with the people from the VA accounting system, they had said more than 200 disabled veteran accounts had been hacked,” Redmond said. “They were being sent to different checking accounts throughout the country.” 
The story doesn’t end there. When the hacking was caught last month, the VA was able to get a replacement check to Redmond within the week. The problem was, the system issued duplicate checks, one of which was returned, resulting in Redmond’s account on the eBenefits site being suspended. 
“My account is currently still suspended,” Redmond said Tuesday. “At least I got one check in the interim,” he said. “People out there have had two or three checks missing.” 
This isn’t the first time hackers have been able to steal benefit checks from disabled veterans. Stories of hacked accounts go back to 2014, according to some veteran’s advocacy groups. This past summer, reports were prevalent of similar experiences in the eastern United States, with resolutions taking weeks to achieve. 
Last June in Florida, for example, news reports noted benefits being sent to California, where they were converted into prepaid debit cards. One veteran said he’d learned similar hacking scams were happening across the county “at the rate of three or four a month,” news reports from Jacksonville said at the time. 
In a statement published in June, the Veterans Administration denied its eBenefits system had been hacked, but that “we have on occasion learned of individual accounts that have been fraudulently accessed.” 
An identical statement issued Wednesday via email from the Veterans Administration office in Denver went on to say the “fraudulent access” has “affected 0.03224 percent of VA’s more than 7 million active eBenefits accounts, a rate well below the private industry standard.
“Veterans are the targets of many of the same types of fraud as the rest of society, including mail, telephone and online fraud. VA takes fraud allegations and the security of Veterans’ information seriously. When a fraud case is reported or suspected, VA investigates the incident and determines what actions are needed to protect the Veteran’s benefits, report those responsible for the alleged fraud and make the Veteran whole quickly.”
Also, while researching this story, The Telegram was contacted via email by Adam Kinder of the Salt Lake City, Utah, regional VA office, requesting contact information for Redmond. Someone from Kinder’s office, who Redmond said he’d been attempting to contact since the incident occurred, contacted him Wednesday and helped resolve the situation, Redmond said. 
Now, Redmond just wants other veterans to be aware of this type of activity so they’ll guard themselves in the future. 
“There were accounts, several accounts, in places like Indianapolis (Indiana) or Baton Rouge (Louisiana) that had 20 or 30 disability checks going to them,” he said. “When they caught this, it was a mess. 
“But I’m one of the lucky ones. There are people out there who didn’t catch the hack,” Redmond said. “It’s funny, because I’m a Disabled American Veterans Service Officer. I’m the guy I’m supposed to go talk to about this.”