Couple games recruiting program for $4 million, earns ire

From: Army Times

WASHINGTON — The Army paid a Texas couple nearly $4 million for supplying it with names of recruits who may have enlisted without their help, part of a bonus program blasted by a leading senator as a "mind-blowing" waste of taxpayer money, according to interviews and documents.

The Army's Referral Bonus Program — hatched in 2006 during the darkest days of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and buried in 2009 — paid as much as $2,000 per recruit. It mirrored a National Guard program so plagued with kickbacks that more than 800 soldiers have fallen under criminal investigations in the last few years, according to Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, the ranking Democrat on the financial and contracting oversight subcommittee.

Military investigators branded the scheme "sleazy but legal," McCaskill wrote in a letter to top Pentagon officials.

Rene Agosto, a former Army sergeant currently working as a civilian in Texas for the Air Force, developed a website called OfficialArmy.com to collect names of potential recruits. The site, designed to look like the government-run Army online portal, attracted potential recruits and encouraged them to fill out a form with personal information. Agosto and his wife Vanessa submitted those names — as many as 12 at a time — to Army recruiters and collected $3,845,000, according to the Army and McCaskill.

"No one envisioned that someone would be bold enough to put up a fake Army website … and make $4 million in the process," McCaskill told USA TODAY. "They made $4 million by somebody sitting at a desk and going click, click. That's essentially what they did for $4 million in taxpayer money."

Agosto, in an e-mail, said he had sought and received approval from Army recruiting officials for the website. He referred further questions posed by the newspaper to Army officials and declined to speak with USA TODAY.

Lt. Col. Don Peters, an Army spokesman, said the program was killed in 2009 after officials determined they could meet recruiting goals without paying the bonuses.

McCaskill, in a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army Secretary John McHugh, called on them to consider firing Agosto and to install caps on bonus programs to prevent future scandals.

"The Army is embarrassed," McCaskill said. "I think it's very awkward that these multi-millionaires are continuing to get more taxpayer money in their job."

RECRUITING TROUBLE

In 2006, the Army faced a recruiting crisis. Insurgents in Iraq were killing or wounding dozens of troops a week, the war grew increasingly unpopular, and the Army could not meet goals to fill its ranks. Standards for recruits were eased, and the Army began taking volunteers as old as 42.

"There was pressure and stress about getting enough recruits," McCaskill said.

Bonuses also became a widely used tool to keep and attract new soldiers, with billions of tax dollars spent to lure them. The Referral Bonus Program started in January 2006.

Soon after, the Agostos launched the site, OfficialArmy.com. It featured images of troops and the official slogan, Army Strong. "Get a free consultation to discuss benefits of joining the army and answer any questions you may have," a screen shot collected by Senate investigators shows. A form seeking personal identification information, including Social Security numbers, also appears along with this disclaimer in fine print: "Voluntary information shared with the U.S. Army will not be shared with any other party and will be used for recruiting purposes only."

The Agostos submitted the information about potential recruits and collected the bonuses, according to McCaskill's letter to Defense Department officials. "No additional work … was done."

The recruits referred by the Agostos would have likely joined the Army without the bonus program, McCaskill said. She blamed the Army for not stopping the program when they realized it was being abused. Instead, McCaskill said, Army officials offered Agosto advice on the website.

"The couple provided no mentoring, meetings or other service to encourage recruits to ultimately sign up; nearly all the names would likely have joined the Army regardless of having found the OfficialArmy.com web site," she wrote to Hagel and McHugh.

The OfficialArmy.com site came to the attention of Army officials in 2007, according to McCaskill's letter. Their worry, however, was not the large payments going to the Agostos. Instead, they raised concerns about Army trademark infringement and worked with the Agostos to avoid problems.

"We like what they're doing," an Army official said, according to McCaskill's letter.

Agosto told investigators that he had received certificates, coins and letters of appreciation from Army recruiting officials for the referrals.

"They gave me the approval so I could not have launched my web site without their consent," Agosto said in his e-mail to USA TODAY.

The Army is as much to blame as the Agostos for the wasted money, McCaskill said. "Somebody was just too stupid to put a stop to it the minute they found out about it," she said.

'EXAMPLE IS MIND-BLOWING'

The Referral Bonus Program had been intended to encourage a soldier, classmate, teacher or coach to encourage people to consider joining the Army, McCaskill said.

The millions paid to the Agostos could have been avoided with basic safeguards such as not allowing electronic referrals, caps on payments and requiring those who sought bonuses to have met with potential recruits, she said.

"It was sloppy, dumb," McCaskill said. "It was a waste of taxpayer money. It is testimony to the fact that too often in every part of our government people aren't using a sharp eye to figure out if programs are effective and efficient in terms of using very precious taxpayer dollars.

"This example is mind-blowing in its stupidity."

http://www.armytimes.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/18/army-recruiting-scandal/21872809/