Vets Give Theft Settlement to Soldiers' Charities

Apparently, there can be a silver lining to a governmental agency exposing millions of people to identity theft.

And the silver lining shone bright on Tuesday, when the New York Daily News reported that a group of military veterans who had won a $20 million class-action settlement from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was donating most of the money — $13 million — to two New York-based charities that help families of fallen and wounded troops.

About 20 million veterans eventually became part of the class-action lawsuit against the VA, filed after a laptop containing personal information for 26 million veterans was stolen from a VA employee’s home in 2006. The Federal Bureau of Investigation later said it appeared that no one had accessed the compromised data.

But veterans and their lawyers argued that the VA didn’t do enough to protect them after discovering their sensitive data was missing.

Each of the veteran plaintiffs would have been eligible for a payment of $75 to $1,500 from the settlement — while their lawyers received about $5.5 million in fees and expenses, according to an earlier report on the Legal Times’ blog.

The veterans decided to give most of their money to the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund and the Fisher House Foundation..

The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund raises money for families of soldiers killed in combat. It also, according to the Daily News, helped to build the renowned Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio and the soon-to-be opened National Intrepid Center for Excellence, a traumatic brain injury hospital in Bethesda, Md.

There are 45 Fisher Houses across the country, located next to VA hospitals to give families of wounded soldiers a place to stay while they’re being treated.

“When I first heard about it, it just really knocked me down. It’s indicative of the kind of men and women they are,” Fisher House CEO Ken Fisher told the Daily News.

“The veterans are very glad to have done this,” said plaintiff John Rowan, a 64-year-old Air Force veteran from Middle Village, Queens. These two are the most substantial organizations around. But the bottom line is, we had to make sure the VA doesn’t do this again.”