Whistleblowers: Veterans cheated out of benefits [View all]

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Dorrie Stafford said a letter, obtained by CBS News, shows how badly the VA claims system is broken.

It's dated July 29, 2014, and thanks Dorrie's husband Wayne -- an Army veteran -- for the disability claim he filed in July of 2004. The decade-long delay is just one problem; the other is that Wayne died in an accident seven years ago, without hearing a word from the VA.

"It upsets me," Dorrie said. "Why would you suddenly, after all these years, send a letter to a dead man?"

Five whistleblowers at the Oakland, California, Veterans Benefits office told CBS News that Stafford's claim is one of more than 13,000 informal claims filed between 1996 and 2009 that ended up stashed in a file cabinet and ignored until 2012.

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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/veteran-benefits-administration-mismanagement-uncovered-in-investigation/