GOODYEAR — An Army veteran who deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan says a VA benefits error cut off his 100% disability compensation, blocked his GI Bill, and slapped him with a $43,000 overpayment debt — all because the Department of Veterans Affairs incorrectly marked him as back on active duty.
Retired Staff Sgt. Nicholas Ocampo, a 100% disabled veteran, said the VA twice listed him as having returned to active duty after his Oct. 1, 2025, retirement from the Army Reserve, even though he never rejoined the military.
“I’m retired. I’ve got the certificate to prove it,” Ocampo said. “But they’re saying I’m still active duty — with no pay, no nothing.”
Ocampo said he discovered the problem about 20 days after retirement, when he tried to use his Post-9/11 GI Bill to attend a commercial dive school in Goodyear. School officials told him the VA showed he had no education benefits because he was listed as on active duty.
The VA designation, Ocampo said, immediately shut down his VA disability payments and education benefits, more than $4,100 a month gone.
“Everything was canceled on the spot,” he said. “I lost all my education benefits, and then my compensation benefit stuff for disability.”
Ocampo, who previously served as an Army mechanic and later as a drill sergeant in the reserves, said he spent months calling VA hotlines, contacting his former unit and checking with the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, known as DEERS. He said DEERS and Army records showed him as properly retired, while VA records continued to treat him as active duty.
He said the VA repeatedly told him to resubmit retirement paperwork, his DD-214 and pay records, and then wait. It took months, but eventually the VA reinstated his benefits. At that point, he figured the issue was in the past.
But then it happened again.
A VA letter dated July 22nd, 2026, informed Ocampo that his VA compensation award had been stopped due to his “return to active duty.” The letter cited the same active-duty date as before, October 28th, 2025.
His next call was to the VA.
“I explained my concern, like this took months before, and I was living off my own,” he said. “She’s like, ‘Sorry, there’s nothing I can do.’”
Later, he said, he opened his VA app and saw a new problem: a $43,000 VA overpayment bill tied to that same status change.
“It comes back, I owe $43,000 in back pay or ‘overpayments’ … because I was on active duty status since October 2025,” Ocampo said. “I’m not even in the military.”
With his VA disability benefits cut off, Ocampo said he turned to credit cards to cover bills while in school, watching his credit score and mortgage payments suffer.
He called the VA several times regarding the situation. He says the customer service representative even confirmed they could see where this had happened previously but couldn’t help him.
“They see that it happened back in October, and they're like, 'Oh yeah, you did retire. Well, we can't do anything. Resubmit all your paper,” Ocampo recalled.
Finally, after being told by one VA representative to “call your congressman” if he wanted help, Ocampo said he began contacting congressional offices across Arizona and Washington, D.C., and eventually reached out to ABC15’s Craig McKee, an Air Force veteran, who he hoped would be able to understand his situation and relate veteran to veteran.
“Somebody military needs to hear what I’m saying because they understand the military side of it,” he said.
ABC15’s Craig McKee reached out to the VA and within days had a response.
In an email, the VA Press Secretary Quinn Slaven wrote:
“VA terminated Mr. Ocampo’s benefits at the end of July based on incorrect data that said he returned to active duty. VA restored those benefits.” The statement went on to say, “VA regrets the error, and Mr. Ocampo is aware that his benefits were restored.”
Regarding the $43,000 debt to the VA for overpayments, the VA tells Craig McKee that the debt is cleared, and it was removed from Ocampo’s file.
Ocampo says there should be a human involved when these types of things happen and not just an automatic process that terminates benefits and makes decisions. He felt like the VA didn’t have anyone willing to take a moment to truly help. He said he now checks his VA app constantly, worried his benefits could be cut off again.
“It’s very scary because they can just terminate me at any time or anybody in that matter,” he said. “I just don’t want to live in fear of, like, all right, come next month, is it going to be zero or am I going to get paid on the next one?”
