'Reading Eagle' Gets Documents About National Guard Recruiters Altering Papers

By: Two Pennsylvania National Guard recruiters are being disciplined for altering documentation in their pursuit of two former Reading High School students, a Guard spokesman said.

An Allentown recruiter was reduced in rank from staff sergeant to sergeant, while disciplinary action against a Philadelphia recruiter is pending, said Lt. Col. Christopher Cleaver, a Guard spokesman.

Capt. Bill Jimenez, head of the U.S. Marine Corps Junior ROTC program at Reading High School, said the two cases prompted him to stop referring students to the state National Guard.

"I told the Guard recruiters in Reading about this and they said they thought it was wrong, and in their next breath they were asking me what the kid's status was now," Jimenez said. "They didn't care about the fraud, they wanted to get the kid."

Jimenez provided documents to the Reading Eagle newspaper showing that the two recruiters filed fraudulent documents and tried to mislead school officials to get the former students to enlist.

The recruiters were being disciplined for not following policy and procedures, Pennsylvania National Guard spokesman Kevin Cramsey said Monday.

"This is not the way we do business in recruiting. As soon as we found out, we took corrective action," Cramsey said.

The Philadelphia recruiter altered a letter in trying to get a transcript for a former Reading High student, Jimenez said.

Rather than pay a $5 fee and wait for the teen's transcript to be sent to the Guard, the recruiter tried to get the paperwork by saying he was from a fictitious Philadelphia university, Jimenez said. The recruiter sent a fax in which he changed the National Guard logo to read "Admissions Department" and deleted some references to the Guard, but kept the phone and fax numbers of the recruiting office, Jimenez said.

The Allentown recruiter filed enlistment documents that showed that a recruit who had dropped out of Reading High in 2006 was a student at William Allen High School in Allentown, Jimenez said.

The teen wasn't at the Allentown school, Jimenez said. Jimenez said he reported that to the National Guard, which discharged the recruit for filing fraudulent enlistment papers.