Politics

The company Dustin hired: Trajector Medical.

NPR spent months looking into Trajector, interviewing 11 former employees and hearing from 60 veterans who hired the company. The investigation revealed a company that started with a mission to help disabled vets, but that former workers say now is intent on aggressive debt collection and maximizing profits. NPR discovered a web of corporate entities that Trajector uses to contend that it stays within the bounds of a law to protect veterans. Despite repeated written warnings from the VA that it may be breaking that law, the company continues to operate.

NPR also found that the company's moneymaker is a computerized robo-dialer system named "CallBot" that bombards a VA phone hotline meant for vets. Trajector is not accredited by the VA and the VA won't give it any information about vets' disability pay. So it uses CallBot as a side-door to sleuth that out. Trajector regularly enters social security numbers and birthdates obtained from tens of thousands of its clients into the phone hotline, which reveals the amount of each veteran's monthly disability payment. When the company detects an increase, it automatically sends a bill, sometimes for as much as $20,000, and then starts calling to collect.

Trajector is not alone. In recent years, scores of large and small outfits have sprung up promising to help vets apply for disability benefits. Critics call them "claim sharks."