http://www.komonews.com/news/95522579.html

LEBANON, Ore. - The U.S. military says a former Oregon National Guard soldier does not owe them for missing equipment - but he still owes them money.

An Army spokesman told KVAL News they can't say what Gary Pfleider II is being billed for because of federal privacy law.

But Pfleider told KVAL News a spokesman for Defense Finance and Accounting Services told him Wednesday that they paid him too much money for the last three months he was in the National Guard - and now he has to pay it back.

Pfleider was shot by a sniper and medically evacuated from Iraq in 2007.

Last week, he told KVAL News that his Social Security disability check was being docked to pay a $3,000 bill for equipment that went missing after he evacuated from Iraq.

He showed KVAL News a statement he filed with the Oregon National Guard in February 2010 trying to get those charges cleared. An Oregon Guard spokesman also told KVAL News on Friday that Pfleider was being billed for gear by Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

After KVAL News received an e-mail from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington that said Pfleider was not being billed for gear, but for another reason, KVAL News contacted Pfleider again to ask if he had ever received notification of this overpayment.

"I did not," he said. "I was under the impression that (the gear) is what I was being charged for. And that was documentation and information that was given to me at hand from two seargents at my old unit because that's information they were given."

Pfleider told KVAL News a Defense Finance and Accounting Services spokesman told him they mailed three notices about overpayment to him, but he never received them. Based on the paperwork he had and conversations with soldiers in his former unit, he believed he was being docked for equipment.

Pfleider said he was not being overpaid and has paperwork to clear up the discrepancy.

KVAL News wanted to discuss Pfleider's case with Defense Finance and Accounting Services, but a spokesman said Pfleider had to waive his privacy rights.

Pfleider said he will sign that waiver on Thursday.

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post office: "no procedure in place" so they don't have to do anything..your government in action.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/may/25/business/la-fi-lazarus-20100525

Customer stuck with counterfeit money from the post office
After cashing a postal money order, David Lipin tried using one of the eight $100 bills at the gas station and was nearly arrested. Even the Secret Service couldn't help him replace the bogus bills.
May 25, 2010|David Lazarus

Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles TimesA business inadvertently gives you counterfeit money — are you stuck with it? In most cases, yes. But what if that business happens to be a branch of the federal government?

Los Angeles resident David Lipin found himself asking this question the other day after he cashed a $1,000 Postal Service money order at a West Hollywood post office.

He said the postal worker handed him 10 $20 bills and eight $100 bills.
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Lipin, 43, said he then stopped at a nearby gas station to fill his tank. He tried to pay with one of his new $100 bills.

"The clerk took a close look at it and said it was fake," Lipin told me. "Then she looked at some of the other $100 bills. She said they were fake too, and she called the police."

Alarmed, Lipin phoned a lawyer friend. At his friend's urging, he too called the Los Angeles Police Department to report that he'd been given bogus bills. "I wanted it very clear that I was a victim and not someone trying to pawn off some counterfeit dollars," Lipin said.

The cops arrived at the gas station and inspected the cash. They shook their heads.

"The police said the $100 bills were actually $5 bills that had been bleached and altered," Lipin recalled. "They showed me how you could hold them up to the light and see Abraham Lincoln's face. All eight turned out to be counterfeit."

So now what? The police took a report but said they couldn't do anything. They suggested that Lipin try the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which serves West Hollywood.

A sheriff's deputy also said they couldn't do much and suggested he try the Secret Service. So did the post office when Lipin returned to the same branch that had given him the funny money.

"We don't have anything in our regulations to address this," said Richard Maher, a spokesman for the Postal Service.

He added that even though Lipin has a receipt showing he cashed his money order at the post office, it's impossible to verify that he received the bogus bills in the transaction. "What if he got them after he left the post office?" Maher asked.

The Secret Service was sympathetic toward Lipin's situation. But an agent basically told him he was out of luck. Unless an investigation turned up a counterfeiting mastermind, the buck would stop with Lipin.

"Unfortunately, counterfeit money is like a hot potato," said Wayne Williams, deputy special agent in charge of the Secret Service's L.A. office. "Whoever ends up with it last is the victim."