#Middlebury #Veterans
We’ve seen these stories before: a Department of Veterans Affairs employee gets caught stealing drugs. Usually this happens in a VA hospital, but not always. Recently, a former chief pharmacist at a veterans care home admitted that he stole 12,000 doses of various opioids and tampered with the electronic and manual prescription logs to cover it up. And how long will he stay in the slammer? It’s likely to be only four years.
There are problems in veterans’ care homes, but it isn’t always drugs that are taken. Sometimes it’s cash. In one care home, the receptionist was charged with stealing $8,000 in prepurchased meal money and then fixing the books. Turns out this receptionist was a convicted felon and had stolen $60,000 from a previous employer, a fact that never showed up in a background check.
At another VA nursing home, an assistant administrator got hold of a veteran’s ATM card and checkbook and used it as his own personal piggy bank.
A fiduciary, responsible for managing a veteran’s money, misdirected $71,000 of a veteran’s assets and kept collecting after the veteran had gone into a veterans’ care home.
A registered nurse at another veterans’ care home brazenly stole money. At yet another veterans’ home, two people were charged with stealing donated money that was to be used for an event for the residents.
Sometimes, though, it’s not drugs or cash. Sometimes it’s medals. That’s when it gets personal. A 96-year-old veteran had his Legion d’Honneur medal, France’s highest decoration (given to him by the French consul general for his efforts on D-Day) stolen from a bedside drawer. The veteran’s job during the war in France was to mark minefields. I’m glad to report that the veteran’s nephew managed to get him a replacement medal from France.
© 2019 King Features Synd., Inc.
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