Texas couple's $4M Army bonus way out of ordinary

WASHINGTON — The Texas couple who reaped nearly $4 million in recruiting bonuses from the Army referred nearly 50 times as many recruits as the next highest recipient in the Army's defunct bounty program for new soldiers, records show.

Rene and Vanessa Agosto, both civilian employees of the military, sent the Army the names of 2,070 people who became soldiers. The referral bonus program ran from 2006 to 2009 during a recruiting crisis that coincided with the worst fighting of the Iraq War.

The second-place finisher in the program referred 44 recruits, records show. In all, the Army spent about $40 million to collect the names of 24,000 recruits.

Meanwhile, e-mails obtained by Paste BN show that Army officials were informed about the Agostos' recruiting website by a military official who was concerned about its propriety and legality. The Army, however, approved the site and suggested to the Agostos ways to avoid trademark infringement, documents show.

Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat and ranking member of the permanent subcommittee on investigations, has asked Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Army Secretary John McHugh to explain how the program was so easily gamed and why the Agostos should remain government employees.

"How this scheme didn't stick out like a sore thumb to the Army is beyond me," McCaskill said in a statement to Paste BN. "These folks successfully pocketed millions of taxpayer dollars, a fact made even more troubling considering Army officials had full knowledge of this wasteful scheme and did nothing to stop it."

Paste BN reported last week that the Agostos set up a website designed to look like an official Army portal for potential recruits. They forwarded names of people who provided personal information to their site, OfficialArmy.com, to the Army, and collected $2,000 per recruit. In a brief e-mail exchange, Rene Agosto said he had received permission from Army lawyers and officials to maintain the site.

Agosto, in e-mails from 2007, told officials that Army criminal investigators and recruiting officials had approved his website.

By referring more than 2,000 new soldiers over a period of a few years, the Agostos far outpaced even the most experienced Army recruiter, according to a retired soldier with years of experience in recruiting. The retired recruiter spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the goals. A full-time Army recruiter signs up about 1.5 soldiers per month on an annual basis. Top producers, who are rare, sign up three per month, the retired recruiter said.

The Army halted the bonus program in 2009 when it determined that incentives were no longer needed to meet its recruiting goals, according to Lt. Col. Don Peters, an Army spokesman.

E-mails from 2007, soon after the Agosto's site was set up, show that concerns were raised within the Army about its legality. The e-mails from the unnamed military official are addressed to Agosto and officials at Army Recruiting Command and call on him to take down the site. Eventually, the Recruiting Command asked Army criminal investigators to "investigate the website, but was only concerned that the Army's trademarks were being infringed," according to McCaskill's letter.