A veteran in New Hampshire admitted he spent the last 20 years bound to a wheelchair to collect more than $660,000 in benefits for his fake injury after he was caught “walking normally” following visits to his Veterans Affairs office.
Christopher Stultz, 49, pleaded guilty Thursday to making false statements to the Department of Veterans Affairs in 2003 to obtain a 100% disability rating, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Stultz’s elaborate scheme began in January 2003 when he told the VA he couldn’t use his feet after leaving the service, giving him a substantial rating.
A 100% disability rating currently ranges between $3,800 and $4,200 per month, but compensation has fluctuated over the years.
Stultz also obtained funding through the VA’s Automobile Adaptations Team to purchase “specialty automobiles and vehicle adaptations designed to assist veterans with mobility issues.”
Stultz, a kindergarten teacher at Antrim Elementary School, received $662,871.77 in VA benefits to which he was not entitled between January 2003 and December 2022, officials say.
Stultz is a kindergarten teacher at Antrim Elementary School. Mr. Stultz/X
Before confessing his lies, Stultz had been seen and recorded several times walking without needing a wheelchair or other ambulatory device to get around.
In October 2021, Stultz was seen using her wheelchair at the Jamaica Plain VA Medical Center in Boston only to load it into her car and leave the facility moments later.
He then went to a shopping center, where he was seen walking normally without his wheelchair.
Prosecutors said Stultz was “surveilled on multiple occasions” since the first incident.
The veteran repeated the same action he had performed a year earlier at the VA facility in Manchester, but this time he recorded himself walking normally through the mall without needing help in October 2022.
Several people who knew Stultz since the early 2000s also shared with investigators that they had never known him to need a wheelchair or any other type of walking aid.
When law enforcement officers questioned him about his mobility, Stultz admitted he could use both feet and was aware he was wrongly collecting additional benefits, documents show.
The teacher was indicted on one count of making false statements on September 13, 2023.
Stultz’s sentencing date was set for May 6, 2024. He faces up to five years in prison and three years of supervised release.
You may also be ordered to return all of the funds you received fraudulently over the years.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has begun cracking down on false claims over the years.
In September 2023, Paul John “PJ” Herbert was indicted by a federal grand jury and arrested on one count of theft from the government and one count of making false statements.
Herbert, a Navy veteran, was accused of stealing more than $344,000 in military disability benefits and filed for a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in a roadside bombing that never happened.
The veteran claimed he suffered a traumatic brain injury from an IED (improvised explosive device) during a deployment to Iraq after the end of the Gulf War, but it was revealed he was “falsely representing” himself as a decorated war hero injured on the service line.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn