A California man was sentenced on Dec. 20 to one year and a day in prison for his role in the Department of Justice’s largest Post-9/11 GI Bill Fraud case to date.
According to court documents, Philip Abod, 57, of Calimesa, and his co-conspirators defrauded the Department of Veterans Affairs out of nearly $105 million in government funds as a result of the scheme.
Abod and his co-conspirators made false and fraudulent representations to the VA about veterans’ enrollment in approved courses of study and class attendance, according to a DOJ release. He and his co-conspirators also falsified course completion records to make it appear as if enrolled veterans completed their programs, when they had not.
To cover up the scheme, Abod and his co-conspirators falsified veterans’ contact information by substituting phone numbers that Abod and his co-conspirators controlled to ensure that regulators could not contact the veterans. When regulators called the falsified phone numbers to obtain information about the school, Abod and his co-conspirators impersonated students.
From January 2012 through June 2022, the school fraudulently obtained more than $32 million in tuition payments from the VA. During the same period, the VA paid more than $72 million in education-related government benefits to veterans enrolled in VA-approved courses.
Abod was also ordered to pay $3.4 million in restitution to the VA.
For their roles in the scheme, co-conspirator Michael Bostock, 54, of Nampa, Idaho, was sentenced to five years in prison on June 26, and co-conspirator Eric Bostock, 48, of Riverside, California, was sentenced to one year and a day in prison on Nov. 29.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.