Federal Prosecutors arrested seven national army guards on Wednesday. It was said that they schemed the recruitment process to acquire referral bonuses.
Newsday stated that married couples and salaried recruiters, Evette Merced and Darryl Harrison, supposedly passed information on possible trainees to four soldiers. Those soldiers who qualified to gather bonuses of up to $2,000 for recognizing recruiting prospects were paid. Information about the 60 "recruits" and the scheme was stated by the criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. At least $62,000 was given to them for the false recruiting leads. The money was then allegedly split between them.
The complaint also stated that Staff Sergeants Siul Celeste, Jeanette Arizaga, Sergeants Yesenia Adames and Renetta Edwards were the ones involved, Reuters said. They were the soldiers who schemed with the couple who were originally recruiters thus cannot receive any bonus. The four sergeants received $111,000 for the 60 recruits while 47 said it was not those four who recruited them. Meanwhile, another sergeant, Jefferson Simbanamuzo, who was also a member of the New York City Police Department, similarly deceitfully received $10,500 in referral bonuses for claiming to have recruited six soldiers.
The charges against the six went back in 2007, Army Times reported. The married official recruiters were said to have abused their powers and sent the information of new recruits to the four sergeants. Celeste, Arizaga, Adames and Edwards then used their online RA accounts to misleadingly say they were responsible for referring those soldiers to the New York Guard.
The Guard Recruiting Assistance Program, also known as G-RAP, started in late 2005 to boost the declining recruiting numbers during the height of the war in Iraq. Recruiter assistants (RAs) were given $2,000 for every new soldier they recruited into the Guard. The program was deemed a success but later suspended in 2012 when it faced fraud and abuse. Then-Army Secretary John McHugh terminated all recruiting assistance programs a month later.
