A former Air Force noncommissioned officer has been charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud, accusing him of proposing marriage to scores of women to bilk the Pentagon out of more than $100,000 in housing benefits. (Pexels)
A former Air Force noncommissioned officer has been charged by federal prosecutors with wire fraud, accusing him of proposing marriage to scores of women to bilk the Pentagon out of more than $100,000 in housing benefits.
D’Montre Green, a former Air Force staff sergeant, was charged June 16 in the alleged scheme that targeted at least 93 women, according to court documents filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Prosecutors said Green propositioned the women for marriage in April 2017 in an effort to boost his Basic Allowance for Housing stipend, which was set to decrease after his divorce one month earlier.
Green served in the Air Force from December 2011 until May 2022, according to prosecutors. He was stationed at Royal Air Force Lakenheath in the United Kingdom with the 48th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron when he began his spree of marriage proposals.
Green told the women in “text messages and mobile applications” that he would pay them part of his increased monthly BAH payment in exchange for a legal marriage, prosecutors said. Service members with dependents are entitled to higher housing stipends than single troopers.
In one exchange, published in the court documents, Green compared such an arrangement to being a “sugar daddy,” but added sexual favors would not be part of the deal.
“So basically I would get paid extra from my job by having a spouse/dependent, which in return I’d be paying you [$]500 every month for the next [four] years or however long we agree if you’re interested,” Green wrote to one woman. “And no, I’m not expecting you to live with me or do any favors, just a title as a wife.”
One woman from Abilene, Texas, who was not identified by name in the court documents, agreed to marry Green in April 2017 “for the purpose of obtaining increased military benefits, including BAH, to which he would otherwise not be entitled.” Green and the woman were married by proxy, while Green was still in the U.K., according to prosecutors.
In June 2017, Green submitted a marriage license and paperwork claiming his new wife as a dependent spouse, who was in San Francisco, Calif., one of the highest locations for BAH pay. Prosecutors said Green “certified that his spouse lived in “CA 94106,” a ZIP code that does not exist.
“Green knew that [the spouse] lived in Abilene, Texas, at the time he submitted the forms,” prosecutors wrote in the documents. “At no point did [the spouse] live in California. Green falsely stated that [the spouse] lived in California in order to obtain increased payments from the” Defense Department.
The resulting San Francisco-based BAH payments, which were paid to Green from April 2017 until March 2020, netted Green $112,023 more than he should have received for housing, the government charged.
It was not immediately clear Friday when Green would appear in court.
