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[color-box color=”gray”]No one will dispute that, given the risks involved, a soldier’s paycheck is on the low side. No one will dispute that, when it comes to fraud, more and more people are crossing the line. No one will dispute that soldiers are people. While those three sentences may sound like a mindless Mensa test puzzle question, “If some foogles are figgles, and all figgles are sniggles, then how many sniggles are foogles?” … it’s not. BAH fraud (Basic Allowance for Housing) is a serious concern for reasons that go beyond the usual “cost to the system.” It can too easily turn deadly.
This article is being written one week shy of the first anniversary of the death of Katherine Morris, a student at the University of Maryland, who was pursuing a degree in Family Sciences. She was the only child of Rev. Marguerite Morris and Pastor Willie (Joe) Morris.[/color-box]
On May 5, 2012, at 8:32 p.m., Katherine tweeted:
The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18 NIV)
At 9:49 p.m., she tweeted and posted on Facebook:
Waiting for this to be over.
The next morning at 5:37 a.m., she was found slumped over in her car. Dead. Katherine left a note for her family on her computer. It said, in part:
“… I know that if I needed to I could reach out to any one of you and you would do what you could to help but I feel the only way for justice to truly be served in this situation is for me to give my life for the cause. I’m doing what I’m doing so that others may know the truth. -Kathy”
There was more, much more, but Kathy’s wish was that the world would somehow come to understand the extent to which some individuals are willing to go to use/abuse others in the quest for … more money. And, hopefully that the world would also come to understand the true cost of fraud.
HERE IS KATHY’S STORY:
Kathy, born March 11, 1990, met “Army Specialist Isaac Goodwin” at a club in early 2011 and entered into a relationship that was fueled mostly by social media, texts, tweets and phone calls. Initially Goodwin was a charmer, saying all the right things; but after he was transferred to Fort Bragg, he became demonstrably jealous and emotionally abusive. Kathy suspected he had other interests, and mutual trust was never a foundation in their relationship. By late July she suggested they go their separate ways.
He responded, on July 30, 2011:
Goodwin: Guess what?
Katherine: What?
Goodwin: I love you Kathy
Katherine: I love you too Isaac. That made me smile.
Goodwin: I can’t wait to see u
Katherine: Same here baby.
Four days later, on August 3, 2011, they were married. He’d decided that marriage was the answer and they exchanged “I Do’s” in Arlington, Virginia, in front of a civil magistrate. No ring for Kathy, but Goodwin got a stamped/sealed/official copy of the marriage certificate. The golden ticket to an extra chunk of change in his paycheck.
Later investigation would show that Specialist Goodwin applied for and received a BAH increase immediately after making Katherine his bride. He claimed a dependent for August 2011 and got $923.72 (married) instead of the $409.41 (single) he’d gotten the month
before. In September, October, November and December, he received BAH payments of $989.70. In January, the BAH increased again to $1,022.70. Meanwhile, Katherine struggled to stay in school, working two jobs to pay her rent. Apparently hubby never bothered to tell her about the extra income, and according to Kathy’s roommate, he only visited her twice the entire first semester.
By mid-December, Kathy had had enough; she sent Goodwin information about filing for divorce in Maryland. Deeply distraught about the situation and convinced that he was cheating on her, Katherine sent him the following email:
I hope she’s worth it. I’ve packed up all of my stuff so it’s easier for my parents. I cut the screen out of my bedroom window. Now all I have to do is take the dive and you’ll be free from having to deal with me forever. No more me stressing you out, not trusting you, accusing you, threatening to divorce you, or anything else. You can be happy now. Till death do us part. I love you.
In the infallible way they have as caregivers, mothers have a sixth sense concerning a child in trouble. Katherine’s mother, the Rev. Marguerite Morris, contacted her daughter on December 22. Katherine’s response was a suicide letter. Marguerite instantly dialed 911 and reached the campus police. Fast action saved Katherine’s life and her parents raced the 90 miles to Washington Adventist Hospital. It was there that they learned that their daughter had married Goodwin five months earlier. It was there that they learned of the emotional turmoil that had been wrought upon their child.
Goodwin was contacted at Fort Bragg and told of his wife’s condition. He said that the military would not allow him to come to Katherine’s bedside. Calls to him over the next four days got no response, so Katherine’s parents called the Red Cross for help. Finally, with his commanders aware of the situation, Goodwin called Katherine’s mother and said he was on his way to Maryland.
Mothers are golden, too. Katherine’s mother knew that her daughter, as a military spouse, was entitled to support. She herself had been a military spouse, so she knew how the BAH was supposed to work. Goodwin, however, insisted that he only received $70 to $80 extra per month as a married man; and he claimed benefits for Katherine were only available if she joined him at Fort Bragg. Believing not a word from the young man’s mouth, Marguerite wrote a letter to Goodwin’s commanding officer at Ft. Bragg and made the following points:
- To date Specialist Goodwin has never informed his spouse of any entitlement to a military ID card.
- To date Specialist Goodwin has never signed his spouse up for any medical benefits.
- To date Specialist Goodwin has received over $4,000 in spousal benefits, including January 2012.
- We firmly believe that Specialist Isaac Goodwin filed for and has been receiving BAH for his wife Katherine Goodwin Morris and that he has failed to pass those benefits on to his spouse.
Shortly thereafter a conference call took place between Goodwin, Katherine, her parents and his commanding officer. Goodwin was officially ordered to comply with the Army’s Spousal Support dictums. On January 9, 2012, he applied for a military ID card and medical benefits for his wife.
On the heels of that, in February 2012, Goodwin opted to obtain a $100,000 life insurance policy on his wife, one on which he was the sole beneficiary. It is believed that Kathy knew nothing of this policy.
Through the young woman’s eyes, there was only betrayal after betrayal. When Goodwin was deployed to Afghanistan the first week of March, he told Katherine that he did not want anyone there when he left — no mother, no family, no wife. Katherine, both smart and savvy, followed Goodwin’s mother on Twitter and learned that she was on her way to North Carolina to see her son deploy.
Katherine finally received a check for $600 in March; but all the money in the world was not enough to dull the pain. Goodwin, surely not in Kathy’s smart/savvy league, was twitting, tweeting and posting on Facebook, carrying on relationships with at least five women.
When Katherine learned this, she sent an email to the ladies on March 9, 2012.
Hello Ladies,
Just wondering if you all know that Isaac Goodwin is married and messing with all of you at the same time. Well now you know. I guarantee he’ll deny it. Don’t worry; as soon as he gets back from Afghanistan I’ll be divorcing him so y’all can fight over who gets to have him then. But have a blessed day ladies! The official Mrs. Goodwin!
One of those five women was a member of the military who had been involved with Goodwin for more than two years; before he left for Afghanistan, they’d discussed marriage, tried on rings and planned for the future. That woman sent him an email confronting him:
To think that you would go ahead and MARRY someone you know likes/cares about you just for financial gain is crazy … Or should I say just plain STUPID. DUMB. And to think you weren’t going to run into any problems. Not very smart Goodwin. However please know that you HURT my feelings deeply. It’s really sad that even still I feel like you’re not telling me the TRUTH about everything. But maybe that’s a good thing!!!!! Well one thing I do know to be the truth is KARMA and I’m sure you will be receiving your share very soon!
… and Katherine, who was actively checking/reading his email, followed up with her own email to Goodwin:
Aww she really cares about you! Doesn’t want you to get in trouble on your job but you should tell her that if she really cared and didn’t want to get you in trouble she would stop sending you emails because I have printouts of every single email she’s sent you and it doesn’t look good for you on the whole frauding the government by marrying me to get BAH or on the whole you committing adultery. She’s just digging an even bigger hole for you but I do thank her for that.
Things were unusually hot in Afghanistan that evening. Caught in an expanding web of deceit and lies, Goodwin was most afraid of the Inspector General and the certain fraud charges.
I am sorry. I wont talk to none of them anymore. Are you going IG? I give you the divorce. Please, he texted to her. She replied that she would settle for only the entire truth. That truth never arrived – – only more lies and more deceit. Delivered like the climbs and plummets, twists and turns, of a rollercoaster.
Part of an April, 27, 2012 text read:
Goodwin: I love you and I want this to work.
Katherine: Are you sure?
Goodwin: Have faith.
Then five days of nothing.. Katherine tried repeatedly to reach him with texts. Her answer was only silence. He was in Afghanistan, on patrols; any wife’s nightmare.
On Wednesday May 2, 2012, there were a flurry of incoming emails from one of the other women using an alias. Katherine was at work and unable to respond; the tone of the texts escalated. The woman wanted to talk and provided a phone number. Katherine called her later and was told that the whole time Goodwin had been telling her that he loved her and wanted to make the marriage work, he was telling the other woman that he was going to divorce Katherine and marry her because the entire marriage to Katherine was only a scam to get BAH. (The calls and texts were later traced, well after Katherine’s death, to the military woman, who was making them from a military office during working hours. Records in the family’s possession reflect the time, duration and content of those contacts.)
Between that phone exchange and Saturday May 5, messages flew — although none to Katherine from Goodwin, Katherine was actively searching by computer to learn the true identity of the source of cyber-bullying, and she was spiraling downward, faster and faster, every moment..
On Saturday evening, May 5, Katherine entered her final goodbye note to her family on her computer and then left the apartment. Her roommate assumed she was going to church, like she did every Saturday night; but that was cruelly not the case.
Hearts only have a finite capacity for pain. Eventually they break.
Katherine S. Morris, 3/11/1990 to 5/6/2012
It’s been a year and the family’s horror is not yet over. Upon being notified of Katherine’s death, the Army flew the grieving husband back to the states. He did not attend the funeral, but he did pick up the death certificate at the funeral home — as a husband is legally entitled to do – – and he did file a claim to receive the $100,000 death benefit from the life insurance company: the one he had applied for; the one on which he had filled in his name as sole beneficiary; the one he had obtained just days after Katherine’s first suicide attempt, the one she never knew about.
The Army inquiry did produce an admission from Goodwin that his “marriage was a sham and solely for benefits.” At this writing, the family has filed a case against Prudential Financial Inc. seeking to prevent payment of the death benefit to Isaac Goodwin.
The Army conducted an inquiry into the communications between Katherine Morris and Goodwin’s other woman, the service member. The investigation concluded that there was not enough evidence to charge her with cyberbullying.
While investigators acknowledged that Katherine’s family had submitted “voluminous documentation,” only four items were considered of enough importance to be included in that official report: a single note from Katherine about two amounts she had received since the conference call and three emails exchanged between Katherine and the other women. Not included were Goodwin’s communications begging Katherine not to report him to the authorities for what he’d done. There were no copies of anything he’d written; in fact, there were no copies of anything else at all. The investigating officer concluded “I find no evidence that SPC Goodwin committed BAH fraud.”
With a congressman’s assistance, a second inquiry was launched by the family. There are more loose ends and open questions than there are answers. Twenty Freedom of Information requests made directly to Ft. Bragg since the August 18, 2012, release of the Official Report have gone unanswered.
Silence. Deafening silence.
Like a slap in the face, the only response from the Army has been to promote Goodwin from the rank of PFC to Corporal and to increase his payscale accordingly.
BAH fraud, like every other fraud, takes place because our system both allows it to occur and fails to adequately punish the perpetrators of seemingly harmless little crimes. Trivial white collar — wearing Army greens.
The apparent reasoning behind the Army’s official finding that there was no BAH fraud proven was that the marriage certificate — regardless of the how or why it was obtained — was all that was required to pay out the extra dollars. Intent to commit a fraudulent act (by definition for financial gain) is negated, in the case of BAH fraud, by the marriage certificate.
Our two most powerful weapons in the war against fraud are communication and education. We’ve attempted to include both in this article. Kathy is gone; however, it’s up to the ordinary people of this country not to lose sight of her dying wish. Fraud is fraud, no excuses, and those who perpetrate it must be held culpable if it is to be defeated.
[color-box color=”black”] “I have met the enemy and he is us.” (Walt Kelly/Pogo).[/color-box]
[color-box color=”white”] BAH fraud was problematic enough that, in October 2010, the Navy offered fraud training on spotting sham marriages. Among the nuggets of advice offered on Power Point slides were these:
- Fraudulent or sham marriages involve either fraudulent marriage documents or contractual/convenience marriages.
- An example is “marriage for the sole purpose of collecting BAH, providing spouse with military benefits (medical/dental)/green card (sometimes in exchange for monetary payment).”
The BAH training materials included these fraud indicators:
- Spouse not claimed as beneficiary for salary, leave accruals or SGLI benefits (life insurance)
- Spouse not listed in DEERS (medical benefits program)
- Spouse not provided with an ID card
- Records do not reflect a common dwelling[/color-box]
Editor’s Note: As the primary writer for The John Cooke Fraud Report, 19 years this month, only a handful of stories have brought tears to my eyes as I tried to write them.
The first was the story of Kaitlyn Arquette, an 18-year-old girl savagely murdered in what the Albuquerque Police labeled “a random driveby shooting” despite overwhelming evidence that Kaitlyn was hunted down and executed.
The next was the case of Denise Sartor (we called her “Donna Saylor” as it was an open case when the story was written). Denise was the single mother of two teenage boys who fell in love with a man she knew little about, married him, changed the beneficiary on her insurance policy to name him sole beneficiary, and then flew off to his home town of Ramallah (Palestine) in response to her husband’s plea, “come with me to my home country so that my family can meet my beautiful American bride…” Less than a week later she was dead. An “accident.” Sure. And so were the other two dead bodies (same perps) that the resulting investigation unearthed.
Now there is Kathy Morris, another young lady who met a tragic end due to yet another outcome of fraud. Kathy’s last wish was that her story be told. That’s what I’ve tried to do.
I’d never heard of BAH fraud before this. I’d never heard of a soldier being able to procure insurance on his wife, without her knowledge, admit to a fraud (one which cost a life) and then receive a promotion. The life insurance benefit has not yet been paid — Kathy’s family is fighting as hard as they can. The first copy of this issue of the JCFR is going to be sent to our own congressman as soon as it comes off the presses. It’s all I can do, and the tears shed tell me that I know that it’s not enough. LK
