September 11, 2025
Greensboro, NC – On September 4, 2025, District Judge William Osteen Jr., of the Middle District of North Carolina rejected defendants’ motion to dismiss, and held that a federal False Claims Act lawsuit which Cohen Milstein whistleblower client, Leslie Carico, filed on behalf of the United States government against Veterans Guardian, a veterans’ disability payment claim consulting firm, Scott Greenblatt, its founder and CEO, William Taylor, its COO (as to conspiracy only), and Gregory Villarosa, a psychologist who worked with Veterans Guardian, could proceed. Notably, the court rejected the defendants’ attempt to dismiss the whistleblower’s conspiracy claims as lacking in the requisite specificity.
Veterans Guardian calls itself a “pre-filing consulting firm” that seeks to increase its military veteran clients’ monthly disability payments from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). It markets itself to and serves veterans nationwide.
The whistleblower, a former Veterans Guardian employee, alleges that in the course of preparing disability applications and submitting them to the VA on veteran clients’ behalf, Veterans Guardian, an unaccredited, for-profit company, fraudulently and without any reasonable basis, routinely assigns new veteran clients a mental illness, typically depression or PTSD, in order to inflate their disability level. Defendants then manipulate the veteran-specific information contained in the various forms required for submission to the VA to fraudulently ensure that the veteran can achieve a 100% disability rating or as close to that rating as possible. Furthermore, the whistleblower claims that individuals at Dr. Villarosa’s psychology practice lack the professional credentials required under applicable law to conduct psychological evaluations of the veterans but nevertheless conduct them.
In exchange for Veterans Guardian’s services, the veteran, who has chosen Veterans Guardian in good faith, agrees to pay the first five months of any increase in any disability payments which he/she receives as a result of the submission Veterans Guardian makes to the VA.
Gary Azorsky, Jeanne Markey, Casey Preston, and Adnan Toric, attorneys in Cohen Milstein’s Whistleblower practice, have been prosecuting this lawsuit on behalf of the whistleblower. “Veterans Guardian has not been shy in promoting its interests publicly, both as part of its ongoing marketing efforts but also as part of its aggressive lobbying campaign to prevent its business model from being jeopardized by recent legislative efforts to curb fraud in this industry,” the Whistleblower team stated. “Cohen Milstein emphatically believes veterans and taxpayers deserve a veterans disability system free from fraud and waste. We intend to play a role in achieving that worthy goal by proceeding with this lawsuit.”
The whistleblower in the case is also represented by Gary Jackson of the Law Offices of James Scott Farrin and by Bill Nettles, John Warren, and Fran Trapp of The Law Offices of Bill Nettles. The case name is U.S. ex rel. Leslie Carico v. Veterans Guardian VA Claim Consulting, LLC, et al., C.A. No. 20-784-WO-LPA, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
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