Editor’s note: This article first appeared on The War Horse, an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service, under the headline, “VA Warned These Companies They May Be Breaking the Law. Most Are Still in Business.” Subscribe to their newsletter.
Helping veterans get through the red tape of applying for VA disability benefits has become a multibillion-dollar industry over the past decade. Which might be surprising, because charging vets for such help may be against federal law.
An investigation by The War Horse and NPR reveals that over the past 10 years, the Department of Veterans Affairs has sent more than 40 letters to dozens of claims consulting companies, sometimes called “claims sharks” by critics, warning them to review their practices and “immediately cease” any illegal activities.
Yet this hasn’t stopped them; on the contrary, many of these companies have only gotten bigger and bolder. One company even sent The War Horse a cease and desist letter, trying to prevent parts of this story from being published.
These companies exist in a wild west, raking in huge sums as lawmakers and regulators struggle to keep up with legal loopholes. Some of them are multimillion-dollar firms with more than 100 employees on their payroll, while others are small, family-owned businesses. Many are founded and run by veterans, who claim that their primary goal is to help other veterans get the benefits they deserve. But under federal law, only representatives accredited by VA — such as lawyers and nonprofit veterans service organizations — can provide such help, and the department has been trying for years to crack down on unauthorized firms with little to no success.
“We just focus on our client,” said Chas Sampson, an Army veteran and CEO of Seven Principles, who insists he never received the warning letter that VA sent his company last year. “If the VA ever comes out and said, ‘Hey, you’re going to prison for this tomorrow,’ we’re going to stop doing it. Until then, we’re going to continue servicing the people.”
The War Horse obtained dozens of warning letters from VA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for all cease and desist letters sent to claims consulting companies over the last 10 years. An analysis of the letters and an investigation into the recipients show:
- At least 29 of the 38 companies that were warned in letters that they may be engaged in unlawful activities appeared to still be operating as of late November. Twenty-nine still have active business registrations, and a total of 34 have an active website or social media account. At least nine of the companies were registered as nonprofits.
- Some of the biggest companies, including VA Claims Insider, Trajector Inc., and Veterans Guardian VA Claims Consulting, received multiple letters over the 10-year period, all the while growing their companies to hundreds of employees and collectively spending millions of dollars on lobbying efforts and political endorsements.
- The number of warning letters spiked in 2024 amid a rising VA effort during the Biden administration to stop a wide variety of fraud against veterans, who reported being swindled out of $419 million last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission. There were no letters from 2025 in response to The War Horse’s FOIA request, and VA wouldn’t say if the agency had sent out any this year.
The debate over charging veterans
The lack of repercussions for claims consultants comes as battles at statehouses across the country and on Capitol Hill play out over dueling legislative efforts to either crack down on the companies or clear the way for them to legally charge veterans for such services.
The benefits claim process can be long and arduous as veterans petition VA to rate the severity of their disabilities and get financial and other benefits based on a percentage rating from zero to 100. These companies offer speed and convenience in return for cash — like hiring an accountant instead of doing taxes yourself.
But many of these firms charge vets more than 10 times what they might pay for help on their taxes. Some bill veterans a one-time fee that is five times their disability rate increase, which can be upwards of $20,000. Most companies say they’re not violating the law because they only advise veterans on how to file for benefits and don’t actually file the veterans’ benefits themselves.
The warning letters have had little impact, critics say, largely because about 20 years ago Congress stripped penalties from the law.
“VA is not a law enforcement agency,” Pete Kasperowicz, VA press secretary, said in response to questions from The War Horse and NPR, “but is fully committed to preventing bad actors from taking advantage of veterans.”
Kasperowicz said that when VA sees signs of fraud, the department works with appropriate law enforcement authorities. “But we also want to make sure veterans have choices, particularly if they aren’t happy with whatever options might be available to them for free.”
‘CallBot’ auto-dials VA
One of the biggest companies, Florida-based Trajector Inc., received two warning letters: one in 2017 when the company was called Vet Comp and Pen Medical Consulting, and the second in 2022 — a 12-page missive detailing potential legal issues with the company’s fee structure and staff attorneys. That letter, sent via certified mail, was addressed to the company’s cofounder and CEO, Navy veteran Jim Hill. It warned the company to “cease all preparation, presentation and prosecution of VA benefit claims,” or else VA would “refer the matter to appropriate Federal and State law-enforcement authorities.”
Three years later, Trajector is still operating and pursuing veterans for payment even when veterans say the company wasn’t responsible for their disability rating increase, an NPR investigation has found.
Using an automatic dialing system the company refers to as “CallBot,” Trajector has been able to repeatedly dial a VA phone hotline that is supposed to be a resource for veterans to check the amount of their monthly disability payments. But some claims consulting companies, including Trajector, call the hotline regularly, using a veteran’s personal information to see if they’ve obtained a payment increase, the investigation found.
Trajector isn’t the only company that calls VA to check on a veteran’s benefit increase. Veterans Guardian calls the agency, and Veteran Benefits Guide also uses an autodialer to check on VA benefits — though the company says it does so with its customers’ consent.
NPR’s investigation found that once Trajector determined a veteran had gotten an increase, the company would then begin pursuing the veteran for payment.
When NPR asked about the autodialer, Trajector pointed to its service agreement, which says that the company may use personal information about the veteran to access VA systems.
In a response to VA’s first warning letter, Trajector told VA that what they did was legal because “they prepare the person — not the claim.” But, VA replied, “This is a distinction without a difference.”
In an email to The War Horse, a company spokesman insisted that Trajector is not a claims consultant but instead a medical evidence service provider.
“We take any communication from VA seriously,” said Steve Zenofsky, director of communications and public relations of Trajector, when asked about the warning letters. “When these letters were received, we promptly responded in writing, and in the nearly four to eight years since then, have received no reply from VA.”
‘I was more than happy with paying’
Gage Coons recalls his trip to Montgomery, Alabama, as one of his happiest times in recent memory. He road-tripped there from his home in southern Alabama to speak out against a proposed law that would ban claims consulting companies from practicing in the state.
Veteran Benefits Guide, a claims consulting company that Coons had used to upgrade his disability rating, had asked if he would be willing to drive to the state capital and lobby against the bill. The company paid about $200 for his gas and food, Coons said, but he did it because it was what he believed in. “If you’re a veteran, you deserve every option,” he said.
Coons said he tried multiple options to get his disability rating after leaving the Navy in 2023. A former gas turbine system mechanic on the USS John S. McCain, Coons left the service with an injured shoulder and PTSD. His first attempt to file for VA disability benefits was with Disabled American Veterans, a veterans service organization that helps veterans file for their benefits for free.
Coons said he appreciated that he didn’t have to pay, but the process took more than six months — time when he could have been getting disability pay after the business he tried to start failed, he said.
After getting rated at 50% disabled, he saw a message from a friend on Snapchat about Veteran Benefits Guide helping veterans increase their VA ratings. “That process went by super fast,” Coons said. Veteran Benefits Guide set him up with multiple doctors to document his medical issues, then compiled a packet for him that included all the necessary medical records and forms.
A couple of months later, Coons was rated at 90% disabled — the only catch was the cost. Coons owed Veteran Benefits Guide around $5,000.
“I was more than happy with paying that, especially with the amount you get monthly,” in disability benefits, said Coons, now a full-time student getting a welding degree.
‘Not to be referenced or discussed’
Not everyone is happy that veterans are paying companies like Veteran Benefits Guide thousands of dollars. In a letter dated Aug. 8, 2024, VA said Veteran Benefits Guide “may be engaged in unlawful or illegal activities,” and it should review its business practices and “immediately cease” any such activities.
VA characterized it as a cease and desist letter in a public records response to The War Horse — though Veteran Benefits Guide disagrees. In a September 2024 response to VA, the company said that it was confident “it is not involved in unlawful or illegal activities with respect to the assistance it provides veterans.” The company says VA never responded, signaling to VBG that the matter was resolved.
A year later, Joshua Smith, founder and CEO of the company, said in an interview with The War Horse and NPR that “we’ve never received a cease and desist letter like other companies have.” Smith, a Marine Corps veteran, founded Veteran Benefits Guide after a career at VA as a disability rater. “We want the VA involved. We want federal oversight. We want accreditation reform.”
The company, however, didn’t want to be included in this article. Earlier this month, its lawyer fired off an 11-page cease and desist letter to The War Horse. In it, they repeat that the letter Veteran Benefits Guide received from VA was not a cease and desist, and that a “mischaracterization of the Letter is likely to mislead readers and imply that VBG engages in unlawful or illegal activities despite there being no supporting evidence of such a claim.”
The company then went further, demanding assurances that “VBG will not be referenced or discussed” in the article “should it be published.”
Claims consultant companies have a track record of denying they received cease and desist letters from VA.
The letter that VBG received was similar to one that another claims consulting giant, Veterans Guardian, received in 2019, citing the same laws and using similar wording.
It took a scolding from a House subcommittee on Veterans Affairs to force Veterans Guardian’s co-founder William Taylor to eventually acknowledge receipt of that VA warning letter after he said in sworn testimony that his company had not received a cease and desist. Even after the committee dug up the letter and confronted Veterans Guardian’s legal team, Taylor hedged in his concession.
“I take no issue with [this] characterization,” Taylor wrote, “though this is not how I personally view the correspondence.”
‘The issue is not with the companies’
Seven Principles, a claims consulting business with locations in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Houston, has a few similarities to Veteran Benefits Guide. They were both founded by veterans, turned VA disability raters, turned entrepreneurs.
But with fewer than 30 employees, Seven Principles is much smaller than Veteran Benefits Guide, which has more than 200 employees. Yet it was mailed a warning letter from VA all the same. The letter, dated May 2, 2024, is similar to the letter sent to Veteran Benefits Guide, swapping out details from the company’s website.
Seven Principles’ CEO and founder Chas Sampson, who lives in Houston, said that he never received or saw the letter, which was addressed to a Virginia Beach suite listed on the company’s website and business registration.
“I think you have to put into the veterans’ hands what their choice is,” Sampson said. “If there’s that many companies doing this at this level, and there’s that many veterans that are asking for the resource, the issue is not with the companies. The issue is why aren’t the veterans being serviced?”
An average veteran’s claims case takes about 12 to 14 hours of work, Sampson said. He said they try to involve the veteran as little as possible. “We do all the legwork,” he said, including logging into the veteran’s benefits account online and submitting the claim. “This is a massive burden for our client, and we’re lifting [it] off him or her family to make sure that they get the benefit that they require.”
Sampson said that one thing that sets his company apart is his fee cap — charges are capped at $12,000, though most pay between $5,000 to $7,500, he said. Still, there are other companies that do similar work for far less.
Lukas Simianer, the founder of Vetclaims.AI, said his company charges a flat fee of $1,250 per veteran. Vetclaims.AI, which was founded in 2024, has not received a warning letter. “In no world should you be charging $10,000 for a VA claim,” Simianer said. “It doesn’t cost that.”
The policy stalemate
Michael Missal, who served as VA inspector general from 2016 to January of this year, said his department was occasionally able to bring criminal cases against claims consulting companies with the Department of Justice. But those cases were rare, and usually only in instances when companies made false statements or falsified medical records. “They were just very hard to prosecute,” Missal said, “given that the criminal penalties had been taken away.”
Otherwise, he said, it was up to VA to police the companies by sending out cease and desist letters — and many organizations “just ignored the letters and continued to do work.”
For the past several years, both federal and state lawmakers have been attempting to legislate a more permanent policy fix. While at least nine states have passed bills outlawing unaccredited companies from charging fees, at least six states have legalized claims consulting companies, creating a confusing patchwork of laws where companies are legal in some states, but not others, The War Horse reported earlier this year.
Veterans Guardian, Veteran Benefits Guide, and other big claims consulting companies have each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying for state and federal laws that would legitimize their practices, previous reporting from The War Horse found. These laws would allow them to charge fees up to $12,500 for helping veterans to file their claims, though some in the industry think that price tag is still too steep for disabled veterans to pay.
In California, state legislators drafted a bill earlier this year that would outlaw the companies, calling their business practices “deceptive.” The bill is set for a vote in the state senate in January 2026.
The current federal law is “like having no penalty for speeding,” said Pilar Schiavo, a Democratic assemblymember in California and coauthor of the bill.
“If we’re able to put this into state law, then it allows the AG to feel like they have solid grounding to go after these companies and really hold them accountable,” Schiavo said.
In nearby Nevada, where Veteran Benefits Guide is based, Reuben D’Silva, a Marine Corps veteran and assemblymember, said the company is the type that needs more regulation. He said that he initially thought the organization was working to help veterans. However, “when I saw the amounts that veterans were paying and just the sort of lack of accountability, that’s what really changed my mind.”
Earlier this year, D’Silva proposed state legislation that would regulate claims consulting companies. “I thought it would be a slam dunk,” he said, noting that the issue was the top veterans’ concern brought to the attention of legislators. “But then the lobbying began, and it was very aggressive.”
Eventually, D’Silva proposed a compromise: a $1,000 fee cap for companies to assist with initial claims and unlimited fees to assist with appeals. But both the companies and veterans service organizations were against the proposal, and the bill died.
“Bottom line,” D’Silva said, “it’s all about the money.”
The War Horse and NPR have created a searchable database to look up claims consulting companies that have received warning letters from VA about their practices. Find it here. Search by company name and click on the year to read the letter.
This War Horse investigation is part of a collaboration between The War Horse and NPR. NPR reporters Caley Fox Shannon, Chris Arnold, and Quil Lawrence contributed to reporting. It was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.
