{"id":278210,"date":"2026-06-22T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/afghan-war-veteran-battling-dnd-over-privacy-violation-and-benefit-payment-snafu\/"},"modified":"2026-06-22T04:45:31","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T08:45:31","slug":"afghan-war-veteran-battling-dnd-over-privacy-violation-and-benefit-payment-snafu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/22\/afghan-war-veteran-battling-dnd-over-privacy-violation-and-benefit-payment-snafu\/","title":{"rendered":"Afghan war veteran battling DND over privacy violation and benefit payment snafu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Afghan war veteran battling DND over privacy violation and benefit payment snafu<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/ca.news.yahoo.com\/afghan-war-veteran-battling-dnd-080055623.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-22 04:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: ca.news.yahoo.com<\/a><\/p>\n

An Afghan war veteran is battling with National Defence after the department violated her privacy by providing her banking information to another military member and then erroneously transferring a payment for that individual into her account.<\/p>\n

The Department of National Defence is now demanding that retired Sgt. Tara Bertram pay back the $21,794.89 it sent her by mistake. DND has also warned Bertram that she could face interest charges if there are delays in paying back the money.<\/p>\n

The debacle started in the summer of 2025, when Bertram, a combat veteran who originally served in the army in Afghanistan before transferring to the air force, was leaving the Canadian Forces on a medical disability.<\/p>\n

With a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, she was provided a flurry of payments from the Canadian Forces. Those included a final paycheque, payment for unused leave, back pay, severance pay, payment for long-term disability and disability benefits from Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n

In January 2026, Bertram received a notice from DND saying that she had received severance payments of $17,187.24 in August and $2,872.73 in December that were supposed to go to another military member. DND was demanding the return of the money.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t pick up on the extra payment,\u201d said Bertram, who is in New Brunswick. \u201cMy mental health is so bad I don\u2019t manage the finances. My spouse does that and they wouldn\u2019t have known.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Bertram dug further into what had happened, the department admitted to an \u201cadministrative error.\u201d The money was supposed to go to another individual with a similar last name.<\/p>\n

But Bertram, 44, said the department\u2019s story didn\u2019t make sense.<\/p>\n

In a Jan. 7, 2026, letter to DND, she pointed out that pay was not processed based on someone\u2019s last name, but rather on an individual\u2019s military service number.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis error makes no sense to me, furthermore this error was not made just once, it was made twice,\u201d Bertram wrote to a DND benefits specialist….<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Afghan war veteran battling DND over privacy violation and benefit payment snafu https:\/\/ca.news.yahoo.com\/afghan-war-veteran-battling-dnd-080055623.html Publish Date:…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":278211,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/s.yimg.com\/ny\/api\/res\/1.2\/752.CzWTbgyw3TnhfOAr8g--\/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTEyMDA7aD05MDA7Y2Y9d2VicA--\/https:\/\/media.zenfs.com\/en\/ottawa_citizen_articles_747\/27387941b914b31236e661f6ef8c1fa6","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-278210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278210"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":278212,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278210\/revisions\/278212"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}