A bipartisan trio of U.S. senators is urging President Donald Trump’s administration to conduct an “enhanced investigation” into all unaccredited trade schools that educate veterans under the GI Bill, citing a recent Washington Post series that found such programs have bilked the federal government out of more than $300 million.
In a letter sent Thursday to leaders of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire), John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Maggie Hassan (D-New Hampshire) wrote that The Post’s revelations left them with “grave concerns” about the number of veterans and taxpayers who have been fleeced by “slapdash” trade schools in several states. They also said they were “troubled” by how VA “failed to properly investigate schools with obvious signs of fraud across multiple years and presidential administrations.”
In articles published last month, The Post reported details of how 20 trade schools — most of them unaccredited — were able to defraud the federal government, largely because of lax oversight.
In two cases, trade schools in New Hampshire charged VA more than $14,000 in tuition for courses that lasted only about a week and focused on rudimentary skills, such as how to grow grass or make fake rocks out of concrete.
In another example, a Texas school billed VA around $20,000 in tuition to put veterans through a six-week “boot camp” to become heating and air-conditioning technicians. That was about 10 times what many community colleges in the state charged for an entire semester. The school collected $72 million under the GI Bill before its owner was arrested and convicted of fraud.
“VA has repeatedly said that fraud against veterans is one of its top priorities,” the senators wrote in their letter to VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins and VA Inspector General Cheryl Mason. “It is imperative that we understand how these institutions are allowed to operate and make millions despite multiple oversight measures.”
VA press secretary Quinn Slaven downplayed The Post’s findings and said the department already does a thorough job of policing GI Bill fraud.
“The fraud ‘found’ by the Washington Post was actually just a listing of what has already been uncovered by VA, the [inspector general] and federal prosecutors,” he wrote. “What’s more, the cases highlighted by the Washington Post account for less than 0.3 percent of VA’s education budget since 2016.”
He listed a number of recent steps that he said VA has taken to protect “Veterans and taxpayers from fraud like never before,” such as creating a tool this year that assigns a “fraud risk score” to GI Bill programs and a new Division of Compliance, Investigations and Enforcement.
A spokeswoman for Mason, whose office is responsible for investigating fraud, waste and abuse in veterans programs, declined to comment.
Last year, taxpayers spent more than $11 billion to educate about 666,000 people under the GI Bill, which has ranked as one of the most popular federal benefit programs since it was enacted near the end of World War II. The GI Bill generally covers up to 36 months of expenses for veterans and family members enrolled in college or vocational school.
In a separate letter Thursday, the senators asked Attorney General Todd Blanche to reexamine the Justice Department’s procedures to investigate and prosecute alleged GI Bill fraud.
As justification for their request, the lawmakers cited the fraud cases involving the two New Hampshire trade schools spotlighted by The Post. In one case, a federal judge criticized a criminal plea bargain that federal prosecutors initially reached with officials at the fake-rock school as too lenient. In the other case, prosecutors settled a False Claims Act with the grass-growing school for $200,000, even though it had collected more than $2 million in tuition from VA. Officials at both schools previously have not responded to requests for comment from The Post.
“In light of last month’s reporting on the breadth of the fraud operation that cheated our nation’s veterans out of benefits they earned — including by trade schools in New Hampshire — it’s imperative that the Administration take concerted action to prosecute fraudsters to the fullest extent and rectify the harm done to men and women who risked everything to protect our freedoms,” Shaheen said in a statement to The Post.
Asked for comment, the Justice Department said in a statement Friday that it “takes seriously its responsibility to protect veterans and the integrity of the GI Bill program” and that it “remains committed to holding accountable those who defraud veterans and taxpayers.”
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