Florida Helps Veterans Recover Nearly $3.5 Million Taken by Scammers
TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — On Veterans Day, Attorney General Ashley Moody is shining a spotlight on efforts to assist Florida’s military members, veterans and families affected by scams and deceptive business practices.
“Florida takes pride in being a military-friendly state, and we must ensure our service members and their families do not fall prey to scams,” Moody said. “Our Military and Veterans Assistance Program has recovered nearly $3.5 million for affected military members and families.”
Florida is home to more than 90,000 active and reserve members of the Armed Forces and more than 1.5 million veterans. Since 2019, Florida’s Military and Veterans Assistance Program (MVAP) has received more than 2,300 complaints.
The program’s dedicated attorneys, investigators and team members educate and assist Florida consumers from businesses and individuals that engage in unfair methods of competition or unfair practices.
In the past five years, Attorney General Moody’s MVAP team has worked daily to assist service members and veterans, including investigations to recover funds:
- Roofing Refund: The MVAP team helped a Florida veteran, suffering from PTSD, obtain a refund after a roofing company took the veteran’s money and never fixed the damage to the roof.
- Harris Jewelry: Harris Jewelry allegedly trained employees to incorrectly tell service members that buying on credit from the company improved credit scores. The company also failed to comply with consumer financing laws and added unauthorized charges to the amount financed.
- Healing Heroes Network: The organization was accused of falsely promising to use donations to help wounded veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan receive medical treatments. An investigation found that very little of the charitable contributions actually went to further the charitable mission.
- American Veterans Foundation, Inc.: This organization took in millions of dollars in donations by falsely promising that contributions would assist active military members and homeless veterans. Less than 3% of all gathered funds went to helping homeless veterans.
- Help the Vets, Inc.: This organization solicited donations to fund grants, medical care and a suicide prevention program for veterans, but instead used a large portion of donations collected to pay professional fundraisers and compensate the founding director.