Need help finding a disabled vet
 

We have a case at work where someone apparently fraudulently used another person's name to form a service-disabled veteran business.

So, now we are trying to find out if a certain person is a veteran, but we're drawing a blank. We've even hired a private investigator, who also cannot determine if this person is a veteran.

We've tried using various search engines, such as military.com, but they do not seem very complete.

Does anybody on here have any suggestions?

What other information do you have on this person? SSN? Address? Or just a name?

Have you tried calling a VA hospital?

we only have a name. We know his full name, his current address, and his age. He's 26. We know that he was at the military hospital in Camp LeJeune (I think), but there's nothing to say if he worked there, or was treated there, or what.

I expect that you will have a hell of a time getting to the bottom of this. Vet issues can be very messy. Fact checking and record keeping are generally left to the incompetent. Typical gov't work. My mother had a brother who was a vet. He was always a tortured soul and one day just vanished (not MIA, stateside). No one from the family ever heard from him. She spent years trying to find him. There had been deaths in the family and money left to him. My mother approached every veteran's organization she could find and never found him. One day I answered the phone and it was my long lost uncle George. He had been released from a vets' hospital in Buffalo, NY two days earlier - in my mother's care! Apparently he had been there for 20 years. No one at any vets organization nor the gov't could help to find him.

A lot of veterans are invisible in files that most people can access. Black Ops, Spec Ops, Tacs, etc.....
This is a good thing. Think about it.
I, for one am a strong supporter of this. You wanna turn the crank, better have the rank.

(nods) my boss thinks I can just google up the info. oy. We've been actually trying to look him up, since he's a veteran. We did find him on one site: name, rank and discharge rank all correct; service branch wrong.

Try contacting your congressman's office.

The VA does verification of businesses and owners for the benefit of both Federal Agencies and private businesses. It began with determining eligibility for the VA's own contract awards.

"The Vendor Information Pages Database is the only Federally controlled database in which a legal verification process is used to determine service disabled or veteran status of a small business. All companies participating in the Veterans First program under PL 109-461 are required to submit evidence of ownership / control and veteran status before being awarded a VA contract under the set-aside authority."

Here you can enter the business name to see if it is registered with the VA: http://www.vip.vetbiz.gov/general_us...ch/default.asp

If it is registered, the owner's status has been verified. If you believe there was fraud, report it and ask for re-verification. If it's not listed, I would contact the VETBIZ program to see if they can use their verification process to help you.

Good luck.

I would think finding a disabled vet would be easy. You can't swing a dead cat on the streets of downtown Chicago without hitting one.


Ah. Just read the rest. Never mind.

Simple, ask for a copy of his DD-214. Look at block 18. If he was awarded disability after discharge (very possible), then ask for a copy of the award letter from the VA.

If he cannot provide proof, he shouldn't get special consideration. He can easily ask the VA for copies of any of his records. He was also given a copy at discharge.

We have the PI requesting the DD-214. We'll see! Thanks to everyone who responded.