From your house to the big house

[unhappycamper]

If you knowingly accept too much housing allowance, you may pay it back in jail time.


From your house to the big house
By Vince Little and Mark Abramson, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Brian Martin knew he was getting too much money, the sailor told the court.

After renting an apartment on the economy in Japan, a space opened up at Yokosuka Naval Base so the petty officer first class moved his family there. But Martin’s Overseas Housing Allowance, or OHA, kept rolling in.

"It wouldn’t shut off," Martin said of the $69,000 he collected in fraudulent housing allowance.

Though Martin said he tried to cut off the wrongful OHA, he eventually stopped trying to correct the mistake. And he sealed his fate by signing off on the payments on his "page two" personnel form.

"I really didn’t think about what I was doing at the time," Martin testified in September at his special court-martial. "I knew that someone was going to catch it and that I’d have to repay it."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=59817