The second of two military recruiters caught up in a country-wide fraud scandal is expected to plead guilty in federal court Tuesday.
And he’s not the only one.
Since the its inception in 2006 to pay monetary incentives for enlisting recruits in the Army’s National Guard, recruiters all across the United States have been prosecuted for taking advantage of GRAP (Guard Recruiting and Assistance Program) and committing fraud.
Travis Devall, 47, of Tampa, Florida is the latest. According to his plea agreement, the service member was able to con $78,000 from the government by using stolen personal information about military enlistees he had not recruited.
The flawed recruiting program worked in conjunction with active recruiters. Devall was actually retired when he got involved in GRAP and started scamming his way to thousands, and this — according to the The Tampa Tribune — is precisely how he did it:
It’s not clear exactly how Devall obtained the information for the enlistees, but the plea agreement suggests recruiters may have been sending business his way. It describes the case of an enlistee whose initials are NS. NS told investigators he went to a recruitment office after becoming interested in the military while talking to a friend.
NS told investigators he talked to two recruiters, who told him Devall would call him on the phone, according to the plea agreement. NS said Devall called him after his enlistment. Devall’s submissions to the program said he had met NS through school and had talked to him for about two weeks.
In his deal with prosecutors, Devall agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud, theft of government funds and conspiracy to commit theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft in addition to forfeiting the $78,000.
Wire fraud carries the heaviest sentence with a maximum of 20 years in prison.