Barred From Serving, Never Flagged: The Fiduciaries Who Could Be Rehired

When a VA fiduciary is removed for stealing or felony conviction, staff must flag them so they can never manage another veteran’s money. The OIG found the flag missing in 68% of sampled cases.

The fiduciary program’s one hard safeguard is simple: a fiduciary removed for misusing benefits, convicted of a qualifying felony, or caught violating VA regulations gets flagged in the system, so no office anywhere can appoint them again.

The OIG sampled 129 removal cases and found staff failed to place the flag in 88 of them — 68 percent. The causes were the familiar ones: the program manual lacked clear procedures on when the flag is placed and by whom; training was inadequate; and the quality-assurance checklists contained no question that would catch a missing flag.

The consequence writes itself: a person removed for stealing one veteran’s benefits could be appointed to manage another’s, in another office, with nothing in the system to stop it. The program that exists for the veterans least able to notice theft could not reliably remember who had already been caught at it. See also the fiduciary program page and the fiduciary case files.

"Failure to properly flag barred fiduciaries increases the risk that they will be reappointed"
— VA OIG

Source: VA OIG — Failure to Flag Fiduciaries Who Were Removed Results in Risk to Vulnerable Beneficiaries. Part of the VA Fraud library — see also the case files for the prosecutions these systems produced.