Philly VA hospital employee sentenced to 2 years for embezzling more than $500,000

A former accounting clerk at the Philadelphia Veterans Affairs Medical Center was sentenced to two years in federal prison Thursday for embezzling nearly a half-million dollars through filing fraudulent travel expenses.

Bruce Minor, 46, of Philadelphia, pleaded guilty in May to one count of theft of government funds, admitting he’d created and approved fake expense reports in the names of three employees and diverted the reimbursements into bank accounts he controlled.

“Americans — and especially the men and women who have served in uniform — deserve public employees who do their jobs honestly and with integrity,” U.S. Attorney Jacqueline C. Romero said in a statement. “This defendant selfishly took advantage of his position with the VA to commit fraud, cheating both the veterans who rely on VA programs and the taxpayers who fund those services.”

Minor’s attorney, Mark S. Greenberg, declined to comment after the Thursday sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Chad F. Kenney.

In court filings, prosecutors noted that Minor, a U.S. Army veteran, confessed almost immediately after a colleague in the accounting department noticed roughly $13,000 in expense reports he’d approved for employees who had not taken any work-related trips.

He later sent his father to the VAMC offices in West Philadelphia with $13,260 in cash in hopes of repaying the money he stole.

But a subsequent investigation revealed the scope of his theft was much more vast — more than $487,000 filed through dozens of false expense reports between December 2015 and September 2019.

“With each fraudulent transaction, Minor made the decision to betray the VA’s trust placed in him, to imperil others he involved in his scheme and to bleed the very agency which provides invaluable help to veterans, like himself,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Christopher Diviny wrote.

Minor is the latest in a string of VAMC employees in Philadelphia convicted in connection with various corruption schemes.

Last year, Ralph Johnson, the medical facility’s former chief of environmental services, pleaded guilty to charges he accepted thousands of dollars in kickbacks to steer inflated or phony contracts to a couple in Florida for items ranging from toilet paper to sophisticated medical equipment.

He faces sentencing next week.

And in 2018, federal prosecutors charged several members of a ring accused of defrauding the agency out of more than $800,000 by filing phony medical claims. The alleged ringleader, VA employee Shawn Edmonds, was sentenced to 3½ years in prison that year.

In addition to his prison term, Minor was ordered Thursday to pay $462,256 restitution and serve a three-year term of supervised release upon his release.

“We are satisfied with the outcome of this case,” Rita Chappelle, a spokesperson for the VAMC said in a statement. “Mr. Minor’s actions betrayed the trust of his colleagues and his fellow Veterans that we serve daily and caused a temporary stain on the hard work and dedication of our employees that show up every day, do their jobs with integrity and dedicate themselves in service of our nation’s heroes. The stain, however, has been removed with his sentencing.”