Master Sgt. Toni Jaffe was known as "the M&M lady" because she decorated her office cubicle with keepsakes of the confection's advertising characters. However, the treats she dispensed were sweeter than candy and are now the subject of a criminal investigation.
From 1986 until her retirement last year, Jaffe's job with the California Army National Guard was to give away money — the federally subsidized student-loan repayments and cash bonuses — paid for by federal taxpayers nationwide — that the Guard is supposed to use to attract new recruits and encourage Guard members to reenlist.
Instead, according to a Guard auditor turned federal whistle-blower, as much as $100 million has gone to soldiers who didn't qualify for the incentives, including some who got tens of thousands of dollars more than the program allows.
For years, the auditor and other Guard officials alleged in interviews or internal documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee, California's incentives program was operated as a slush fund that was doled out improperly to hundreds of soldiers with fabricated paperwork, scant supervision and little regard for the law.
The Guard documents describe a high-speed assembly line for bonuses and loan repayments, in which Jaffe single-handedly processed some 8,600 payments over a 16-month period in 2007 and 2008 — about 25 per workday.
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