CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) — Military officials are charging three California-based Marine corporals with fraud and larceny for entering in a pair of sham marriages to collect housing funding, officials said.
The military alleges that a lesbian couple — one a Marine, the other a civilian — decided to live together off base and wanted to collect the $1,200 housing benefit granted to married Marines.
The female Marine found a male Marine willing to get married, allowing them to collect the housing benefit, and the civilian woman also eventually married a Marine and collected funds, 1st Lt. Maureen Dooley, a spokeswoman at Marine
Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego, said Saturday.
The female Marine, Cpl. Ashley Vice, told San Diego's KGTV-TV that she and her partner, Jaime Murphy, were ****** to enter sham marriages because the military doesn't provide allowances for unmarried couples and they couldn't afford to live off base without the extra money. She and her partner only wanted to "be a ******," Vice said.
"It doesn't matter what their sexual preferences are, if they're ********* the law and making fraudulent use of government money, they will be held accountable," Dooley said.
