VETERANS NEWS
MILITARY NEWS
Vets Can Earn While They Learn
If you're a student in a college degree program, vocational or professional program, you can "earn while you learn" with a VA work-study allowance.
MEDICARE SCAMS N.C. Residents
Aggressive insurance salesmen offering alternative Medicare policies have persuaded hundreds of older people across North Carolina to replace their traditional coverage with private insurance that may cost more and do less.
Reports suggested the problem had not become widespread, but state regulators said 28 MAR they are dealing with complaints in Wake, Guilford, Davidson, Robeson, Pitt and other counties.
Poor agent training and misinformation bears some of the blame, but greed may also be at play, said Carla Obiol, deputy commissioner of the state Seniors' Health Insurance Information Program, known as SHIIP. Obiol said the private Medicare policies tend to pay agents hefty commissions.
North Carolina's senior consumer fraud task force sent out a statewide trade practices alert about aggressive marketing to older people, some with dementia. SHIIP is also looking into several cases in which residents of rest homes and low-income housing were targeted, but would not release details.
State regulators can take action against agents who are registered to work in North Carolina.
But only the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services can restore traditional Medicare to people who have bought policies that don't benefit them, Obiol said.
[Source: McClatchy Newspapers Thomas Goldsmith article 30 Mar 07 ++]
New Scam Targets Military Spouses
The American Red Cross is warning military spouses about a new identity-theft scam that targets family members of deployed troops.
The scam involves a person with an American accent calling a military spouse, identifying herself as a representative of the Red Cross, and telling the spouse that her husband was hurt in Iraq and was medically evacuated to Germany.
The caller then says that doctors can't start treatment until paperwork is completed, and that to start the paperwork they need the spouse to verify her husband's social security number and date of birth. ...More
Airman Victim of One-Cent Deposit Scam
An Airman assigned to the 50th Mission Support Squadron recently fell victim to a new banking scam. The scammers apparently generate random routing and account numbers into which they try to deposit one cent. Once the one-cent deposit clears, the perpetrators know the account is active and begin to withdraw funds. More
Walking Point
Military Families May Owe VA $25M
Dual-military couples and married reservists could owe the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs as much as $25 million in unpaid life insurance premiums, according to the Defense Department. Though some military personnel might have been racking up debts related to the unpaid premiums for years, DoD only recently directed all services to identify those who owe so it could collect the unpaid debts.
Hackers Gain Access to MyPay Accounts
There has been a recent rise in hackers attacking MyPay accounts, and most victims did not even know it. Most of the stolen information is collected by software that tracks what you do on the computer, say Air Force network administrators. More
Missing Service Members Database
The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) now has an electronic database listing the names of servicemembers still unaccounted for that is available for family members and researchers. The database lists nearly 78,000 names. More
Beware 'Phishy' Bank of America E-mail
The latest "phishy" e-mail scam claims that a new system upgrade requires members to update their online account information. More
DEFINITION OF A VETERAN
A veteran - whether active duty, retired, national guard, or reserve - is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a blank check made payable to The "United States of America", for an amount of "up to and including my life."
That is Honor, and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.
- Author Unknown
Guns only have two enemies: rust and liberals.
During the year of 2005 there were 4 to 10 MILLION illegal aliens that crossed our Southern Border also, as many as 19,500 illegal aliens from Terrorist Countries. Millions of pounds of drugs, cocaine, meth, heroin and marijuana, crossed into the U. S from the Southern border. Verify at: Homeland Security Report: http://tinyurl.com/t9sht
