Former administrator of leading POW/MIA group sentenced for $250,000 scam
By Matthew M. Burke / Stars and Stripes Staff Writer
The following story is being reprinted with the permission of Stars and Stripes, which retains all rights. The story was published March 7, 2025 on www.stripes.com.
A Virginia woman whose embezzlement nearly bankrupted the nation’s preeminent advocacy organization for American prisoners of war will serve time behind bars and pay restitution to the group, a federal judge in Virginia has ruled.
Jennifer Giorffino, a former administrator for the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, had pleaded guilty Oct. 31 in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to a single count of wire fraud.
U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles on Thursday sentenced Giorffino to three years and nine months in prison followed by two years of supervised release, according to court records. Giorffino will also be required to pay about $257,000 in restitution.
Prosecutors had sought the maximum penalty of four years and three months against the 54-year-old married mother of two. Giles recommended that Giorffino serve out her sentence at the minimum-security Federal Prison Camp Alderson in West Virginia.
Giorffino was hired in 2019 and began siphoning off donations for personal retail purchases in October 2022, the prosecutor’s sentencing recommendation stated.
In all, Giorffino took $257,259 from the nonprofit, which was founded in 1970 and is also known as the National League of POW/MIA Families.
In 1971, the league created the iconic black-and-white POW/MIA flag that flies over government and military institutions.
Giorffino also stole the identity of the organization’s chairwoman emeritus and acting CEO, Ann Mills-Griffiths, and fraudulently applied for at least 30 credit cards and lines of credit for additional spending, the document said.
She made over $36,000 worth of purchases on one card and paid off the cards every month until April 2024 using League funds.
Mills-Griffiths discovered the scheme after her credit card was declined at a restaurant, court documents said.
In February 2024, Giorffino opened a checking account in the league’s name and began diverting checks and online donations into the account, accumulating $29,746, records said.
The organization’s funds were nearly depleted by March 2024, but she forged bank statements and wrote checks she knew would bounce.
National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia Needs your donations
As of March 13, 2025, the number of Americans Missing and Unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War is 1.573.
Since 1970, the National League of POW/MIA Families, has represented the many families of those still missing and unaccounted for and to hold the DPAA and U.S. Government accountable to their promises to pursue and expand their efforts globally while primarily focusing on Vietnam War Missing.
Visit pow-miafamilies.org to learn more, to donate, or to become members.
Giorffino gave the league’s board falsified bank statements at a meeting in April 2024 and stopped working for the organization soon after.
As a result of the embezzlement, the organization nearly ran out of money, records said
It was slated to be dissolved after a Jan. 31, 2023, vote by its board of directors but was saved less than two weeks later by an anonymous donor, league statements said previously.
Mills-Griffiths, who has led the organization since 1978, was in court Thursday. She told Stars and Stripes on Friday that everyone initially thought Giorffino “was an honest, kind, good person.”
“It was so purposeful and well-planned and greedy, as the court put it. … I’m just thankful it’s over and that justice has prevailed, and we are recovering,” Mills-Griffiths said.
As part of her sentence, Giorffino is barred from using existing lines of credit or opening new ones without approval of a probation officer. She must also participate in a mental health treatment program.
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Simple control measures such as not allowing check writer to also sign checks, requiring two signatures/approvals on each disbursement, periodic bank statement reviews by randomly chosen board members, etc. can often prevent these kinds of fraud. Most trustworthy people in financial positions of trust welcome these kinds of controls/oversight.
The MIA/POW issue has seen its share of con artists, grifters, and parasites beginning in earnest during the early 1990s.
And clearly as this tragic story illustrates this form of fraud continues and in many forms.
Internal theft of funds is but one form of fraud – over the years individuals and organizations claiming to either be affiliated officially with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) or unilaterally while vilifying DPAA’s efforts either rightly or wrongly. As with all charities, NGOs, or non-profit entities we are all encouraged to be very careful with our support, financial or otherwise.
Per a recent contact with DPAA’s PAO – “We typically can’t talk about specifics of on-going missions. The main reason for this is because of families. Many of our Vietnam War cases have had a number of missions related to them over the years, both investigation and recovery, that may result in more clues but not necessarily a recovery and identification. We don’t want to get a family’s hopes up only to them have to let them know that we didn’t find anything, sometimes many years in a row. If families specifically ask for a Case Summary Report, like many families get at our Family Member Updates and Annual Government Briefings, we’re happy to let them know the current status of their service member’s case, including missions we’ve conducted or have coming up, but we don’t give those unless they ask, and we only give those to families.”
This is an example of one such recent recovery operation – https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/local/wisconsin/2025/01/21/columbus-pilot-donald-downing-killed-during-vietnam-war-found/77850260007/
Due to Congressional mandates tied directly to continued funding DPAA has for some time now expanded its efforts and resources to include recovery operations related to MIAs from WW1, WW2, Korea, and additional / more recent campaigns. An updated by year list is available of those successful efforts.
https://www.dpaa.mil/News-Stories/ID-Announcements/Article/4034508/pilot-accounted-for-from-vietnam-downing-d/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-downing-air-force-pilot-vanished-vietnam-war-accounted/
And from Stars & Stripes – “The Defense Department agency tasked with accounting for the missing in action from America’s wars identified 172 service members in the just-ended fiscal year, a slight uptick from previous years but still short of the effort’s annual goal…A provision of the 2010 Defense Authorization Act requires the Defense Department to fund the recovery of MIA remains at a level that ensures capacity to account for at least 200 individuals each year. Over the years, that figure “has translated into a goal” for the agency, Col. Matt Brannen, DPAA deputy director of operations, told Stars and Stripes in February. The agency’s ambitions for fiscal year 2024 were hampered by gridlock in Congress over defense spending that left DPAA, along with the rest of DOD, operating at the previous year’s funding levels for almost six months.” – https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2024-10-10/dpaa-mia-service-member-identifications-15471562.html
And this is where the hucksters, fraudsters, and corrupt employees of otherwise well respected organizations pry their way into what is an understandably emotional issue for so many – and with truly heart-wrenching results once families, friends, veterans, and simply folks with good hearts discover they’ve been fleeced.
Kudos to the Sentinel for running this story from Stars & Stripes – accountability is accomplished one case at a time.
Thank you Greg. We are grateful to Stars & Stripes for allowing us to reprint this story.