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Deliberately bad advice can help a veteran get pension benefits out of the Department of Veterans Affairs. Sometimes the advisers take the money for themselves. Eventually the veteran will be forced to pay it all back. It’s called pension poaching and it’s a growing problem. For how the department is trying to stop it, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the VA’s Chief Financial Officer Charles Tapp.
Tom Temin: Mr. Tapp, good to have you back.
Charles Tapp: Thanks again for having me on this morning. It’s always a pleasure to spend some time with you and certainly speaking about important topics for our veterans.
Tom Temin: All right, so pension poaching, how do these schemes actually work here?
Charles Tapp: Well, as you know, fraud is increasing on a global scale, and it’s changing the way businesses and individuals have to protect themselves. And pension poaching is pretty much a financial scam that targets veterans, survivors and their families who are potentially eligible for VA benefits. This popular scam occurs when unethical advisers tried to artificially qualify VA pensionneers or potential pensionneers to get pensions by hiding their money via trust, or hiding their money in annuities. And the unfortunate thing is, once VA reviews those applications or does revaluations on an annual…
