Skip to main content

Military Pay: DOD Improperly Paid Army National Guard and Army Reserve Soldiers in Deserter Status

GAO-06-848R Published: Jul 28, 2006. Publicly Released: Aug 28, 2006.
Jump To:
Skip to Highlights

Highlights

Over the past several years, we have reported examples of hundreds of Army National Guard and Army Reserve (Army Guard and Reserve) soldiers who received inaccurate and untimely payroll payments due to a labor-intensive, error-prone pay process; human capital weaknesses; and the lack of integrated pay and personnel systems. As part of that work, we reported several cases for which mobilized Army Reserve soldiers never reported for active duty and improperly received pay that they did not earn. If a soldier remains absent, without authority, from his or her unit, organization, or place of duty with intent to remain away permanently, a soldier is guilty of desertion. Desertion from the military is a serious offense. The civilian law enforcement community sometimes assists the Army on desertion cases. For example, the U.S. Army Deserter Information Point (USADIP) enters data about soldiers in deserter status into the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) Wanted Person File that is used by civilian law enforcement officers. Whenever a civilian law enforcement officer has reason to question someone about any apparent unlawful activity, standard practice for the law enforcement officer is to determine whether there are any outstanding warrants for the arrest of that person. If the person is a soldier with an outstanding arrest warrant for desertion, the civilian law enforcement officer is to arrest and hold the soldier until the soldier can be transferred to military custody for subsequent legal proceedings to determine innocence or guilt. This report follows up on earlier-identified issues concerning Army Guard or Reserve soldiers who did not report for active duty and who may have continued to get paid. Specifically, as part of our earlier work we had notified the Army Reserve 99th Regional Readiness Command about a number of Reserve soldiers who were improperly paid after they failed to report for duty related to the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). The objectives of this investigation were to (1) determine what the 99th Regional Readiness Command had done regarding the Reserve soldiers assigned to the 1004th Quartermaster Company who failed to report for duty as ordered and whether their retention of the pay represented possible criminal behavior, (2) look for other examples of improper pay to Army Guard and Reserve soldiers who were charged with desertion related to GWOT missions, and (3) determine the status of arrest warrants for any soldiers charged with desertion that we identify.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
Department of Defense Based on the input from officials attending our corrective action briefing and consistent with the ongoing efforts to improve Army Guard and Reserve pay account management that have been initiated in response to our previous reports, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army, in conjunction with the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), to take appropriate action, including initiating criminal proceedings where warranted and recovering improper payments, on the 75 cases of potential desertion identified in this investigative report.
Closed – Implemented
The Army agreed with this recommendation and in response, reviewed the 75 cases identified in our report. Overpayments ranged from an average of $10,000 per soldier across the Army to over $26,000 per soldier at the Army Reserve unit we reviewed. For the 75 cases, the Army reported the total overpayment amount was over $730,000, and indicated in its last update that more than 10 percent of this amount had been collected.
Department of Defense Based on the input from officials attending our corrective action briefing and consistent with the ongoing efforts to improve Army Guard and Reserve pay account management that have been initiated in response to our previous reports, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army, in conjunction with the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), to identify other existing desertion cases to determine whether additional Army Guard and Reserve soldiers have received improper and potentially fraudulent military pay, take appropriate action including initiating criminal proceedings where warranted, and recover improper payments on any additional cases identified.
Closed – Implemented
DOD concurred with this recommendation and stated that improper payments we found resulted from the case study unit's failure to report AWOL/deserters to its finance office, and that, generally, there was little, if any, visibility across Army National Guard and Reserves components regarding payments to soldiers in deserter status. In October 2006, the National Guard Bureau stated that the Army and Reserve Components were working with the Defense Finance and Accounting Service and others to identify whether any cases of improper payments exist among soldiers listed in a deserter status. The Army said it performed a data bump between DJMS-RC and Army Deserter Information Point data files and identified an additional 71 cases where payments had been made to soldiers in deserter status.
Department of Defense Based on the input from officials attending our corrective action briefing and consistent with the ongoing efforts to improve Army Guard and Reserve pay account management that have been initiated in response to our previous reports, the Secretary of Defense should direct the Secretary of the Army, in conjunction with the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) and the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), to provide better assurance going forward, direct a joint effort by Army, Army Guard, and Reserve components to (1) develop a near-term strategy covering the human capital, business processes, and systems issues relevant to potential desertion cases in order to provide better assurance that soldiers who do not report for duty are not paid and (2) in the cases where future improper and potentially fraudulent acceptance of unearned pay are detected, take appropriate action, including initiating criminal proceedings and recovering those improper payments.
Closed – Implemented
The Army, in response to our report, compared payment data to deserter information records and identified over 70 cases of improper payments to soldiers in deserter status. Also, according to an official from the Army Financial Management Command, the Army Human Resources Command performs monthly bumps of the pay system data with multiple personnel databases, including the deserter system, and coordinates discrepancies with DFAS.

Full Report

Office of Public Affairs

Topics

ArrestsCrimesErroneous paymentsFraudLaw enforcementMilitary desertersMilitary payMilitary personnelMilitary reserve personnelNational Guard