Families of Fallen Service Members Being Scammed?

[RetPara]

The package arrived at Cindy Lohman’s home in Great Mills, Maryland, just two weeks after she learned that her son, Ryan, a 24-year-old Army sergeant, had been killed by a bomb in Afghanistan. It was a thick, 9-inch-by- 12-inch envelope from Prudential Financial Inc., which handles life insurance for the Department of Veterans Affairs.

Inside was a letter from Prudential about Ryan’s $400,000 policy. And there was something else, which looked like a checkbook. The letter told Lohman that the full amount of her payout would be placed in a convenient interest-bearing account, allowing her time to decide how to use the benefit.

“You can hold the money in the account for safekeeping for as long as you like,” the letter said. In tiny print, in a disclaimer that Lohman says she didn’t notice, Prudential disclosed that what it called its Alliance Account was not guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its September issue.

Lohman, 52, left the money untouched for six months after her son’s August 2008 death.

“It’s like you’re paying me off because my child was killed,” she says. “It was a consolation prize that I didn’t want.”

As time went on, she says, she tried to use one of the “checks” to buy a bed, and the salesman rejected it. That happened again this year, she says, when she went to a Target store to purchase a camera on Armed Forces Day, May 15.

Full Story

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This needs to come to a halt..

[Silverback]

I guess it serves to remind us that the business of business is to create profits.

[IEDmagnet]

I'm all for burning Prudential down, business is to make profits, but not on the blood of our fallen brothers.

[Silverback]

I'm all for burning Prudential down, business is to make profits, but not on the blood of our fallen brothers.

This is a picture pefect example of Capitalism at work. Before you get all noble on me, I am not agreeing with the policy I am simply acknowledging that this has been an acceptable practice in the insurance business for a very long time. So let's think about this...why now? Why has this long accepted practice been floated for the news agencies? Could it be another round fired in the war against private business? Doesn't the average American associate business with the Republicans?

Wait a second...it cannot be that easy? The tail is wagging the dog?

[IEDmagnet]

I'm not going to get noble on you. I agree with your statement.

I will say this, I'd guess that the reason the news is catching up with it now, or why it is sitting on someones stomach wrong now would be the fact that the this is happening too much to the wrong people. Some random people may allow for this bull, but if you start having to pay large quanities of people receiving claims and getting bent over....

Someone is finally going to decide it's time to get even.

[Lunch]

I have seen/experienced this same practice in other situations as well- and it gives me the ass. However, is there any clause or anything that she has to maintain that money in that specific account? Is there anything that would prevent her from transfering the balance to an account of her choosing? Yes, it is easy money for Prudential or other orgs who do this to keep the money in their own accounts to profit off it, and there are probably many people don't push the issue. While it pisses me off, as long as she has the option of moving the entire balance where ever she wants, when ever she wants, then I'm personally not going to take huge issue with the practice.

[IEDmagnet]

I would do exactly that. Transfer the money to a bank account (or two) immediately. If the Prudential doesn't try to bar the transfer. My opinion would be that have no legs to stand on about what she does with that money now. My second suggestion would be one of those in the event they were to block her from doing so. There are enough of us alive (Vet's), many of whom have lost friends in those various shit holes around the world. I'd be willing to face voice and ass raise the smell of shit to high heaven over this one.

It makes me wonder about my buddies who paid the full price of admission to the other side for this Country, and had full on families at home. Ie. wifes and children. I'm sorry, but this is an underhanded attempt at withholding payment in my eyes. So again, I say fix the shit or I'll personally man the high angle shit and go Steel on shitbags.

[mortar_guy78]

HE is too good for 'em. I'd go Willy Pete on that ass.

[IEDmagnet]

Touche' again. Huge x2.