(Photo by Alastair Pike / AFP via Getty Images)

Two thieves created a scam they managed to keep going for more than a decade before finally being caught.

Keeping it going that long doesn’t make them smart; it makes them long-term lowlifes. 

Solely for the purpose of scamming the government, two guys started up a couple of construction companies. Their goal was to bid on the special contracts with the Department of Veterans Affairs that were for small businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. For a decade, they managed to get 67 of the small business contracts, the majority of which were for more than $1 million each. The problem was that neither scammer had ever served in the military and therefore didn’t qualify.  

Instead, they paid genuine service-disabled veterans to lie and say they owned and ran the companies.  

Being awarded the contracts took 67 contracts away from real veterans trying to honestly run real businesses. The Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999 aims to award 3 percent of all government contracts to service-disabled veterans who own small businesses, although in recent years that figure has exceeded 4 percent of contracts. At this point, there are nearly 2 million veteran-owned businesses. 

In addition to the 67 scam contracts, in one case the thieves filed a protest against a VA decision to award a contract to another company. The VA had received five proposals for a certain job and chose one based on their examination of that company’s qualifications, even though it was not the lowest bid. The scammers lodged a protest of several points. 

Enter the Office of Inspector General for the VA to investigate the ongoing fraud. For all of its good work, the OIG can’t control the courts. The two scammers will never see a day of jail time even though the penalty for just one of the crimes could have sent them away for 10 years. Instead, they were given a year of probation, some community service and a fine. Clearly not enough to send a strong message to other would-be scammers. 

© 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.