There are two jobs in the U.S. Army with well-earned reputations for causing concussions. One is being a "breacher," blowing down locked doors and barricades. Another is firing the shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapon called the Carl Gustaf.
"When you shoot it, it's like getting punched in the face… and you feel weirdly drunk for the next day afterwards," said Dustin, a former Army Ranger who fired that weapon dozens of times and also served as a breacher in Afghanistan. NPR is only using his first name because he fears retribution from the company described in this story.
After he left the military, Dustin struggled as a civilian. He felt pretty certain he had a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, but it took years for him to apply for help from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Applying for disability benefits can be an onerous process. Plus, Dustin said the ethos of his Ranger battalion instilled a resistance to admitting weakness, even after he got out.
"Culturally, you don't go to sick call," he said.
An older vet recommended Dustin get help from a private company to file for VA disability benefits. Dustin reached out to start the process, but after a month went by, he said, the company hadn't done much of anything to help him. Dustin emailed the company and told them to stop working on his VA claim, he wanted to "cancel." He said he then applied for benefits with help free of charge from an accredited representative of the VA.
But when the VA rated him 70 percent disabled, qualifying him for free health care and a monthly disability check, he then heard back from the company in the form of a bill for $4,500. Dustin had no idea how they even knew he'd gotten a decision from VA.
"I got this bill out of nowhere, when I got my VA rating, which just blew me away."
The company Dustin hired: Trajector Medical.
NPR spent months looking into Trajector, interviewing 11 former employees and hearing from 60 veterans who hired the company. The investigation revealed a company that started with a mission to help disabled vets, but that former workers say now is intent on aggressive debt collection and maximizing profits. NPR discovered a web of corporate entities that Trajector uses to contend that it stays within the bounds of a law to protect veterans. Despite repeated written warnings from the VA that it may be breaking that law, the company continues to operate.
NPR also found that the company's moneymaker is a computerized robo-dialer system named "CallBot" that bombards a VA phone hotline meant for vets. Trajector is not accredited by the VA and the VA won't give it any information about vets' disability pay. So it uses CallBot as a side-door to sleuth that out. Trajector regularly enters social security numbers and birthdates obtained from tens of thousands of its clients into the phone hotline, which reveals the amount of each veteran's monthly disability payment. When the company detects an increase, it automatically sends a bill, sometimes for as much as $20,000, and then starts calling to collect.
Trajector is not alone. In recent years, scores of large and small outfits have sprung up promising to help vets apply for disability benefits. Critics call them "claim sharks."
The firms operate in a legal gray area — barred by federal law from officially representing vets or charging them money to prepare their disability claim paperwork; they maintain they are merely helping vets from a distance to navigate the disability claim process. Trajector calls itself a "medical evidence service provider."
Some veterans told NPR they were happy to pay for the help. But others felt misled, particularly those who said they did most or all of the work themselves.
"I think that they took advantage of me and… accessed the VA database to find out if I had a claim so they could make $4,500 from a guy who spent five and a half years in the Army and two tours in Afghanistan," said Dustin, who refused to pay the bill. Trajector told him he couldn't cancel the contract he'd signed.
Trajector declined repeated requests for an interview but said in a statement to NPR, "We encourage any client who feels their experience was less than satisfactory to contact us immediately."
The company said its mission continues to be to help vets receive benefits if they qualify. And the contracts that vets sign do state that Trajector will use their personal information to access VA "reporting systems," though none of the vets NPR spoke to said they understood that the company would be keeping tabs on them so it could send them a bill.
Some vets do get help, but is it legal?
In theory, veterans don't need to pay for help with filing disability claims. They can get free support from accredited veterans service organizations, or VSOs, such as The American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars. Federal law mandates that anyone helping a vet file an initial disability claim must be accredited by VA and that the service be free of charge. Many do get effective help this way.
But some vets who used claims companies like Trajector told NPR they didn't know free help was available. Others said they tried but found accredited VSOs to be well-intentioned yet ineffective. And many vets said they wanted the freedom to be able to pay for help if they wanted to do so.
Trajector makes an appealing sales pitch. It tells veterans that if their claim is denied, they won't owe a dime. But if they receive a disability rating from the VA, Trajector bills them a one-time amount equal to five times their monthly VA check. If a vet receives an increase in an existing rating, the company charges five times the increase in their monthly payment from VA.
One veteran NPR spoke to had a successful claim through Trajector, resulting in VA upping his rating from 10 to 80 percent. The bill was $17,400.
Kelly, who didn't want to use his last name for fear of his benefits being reduced by VA, is a 65-year old Navy veteran who tried, unsuccessfully, to apply for disability through an accredited VSO. He'd been working as a pedicab driver in Northern California, despite a spinal condition that made this work difficult and painful. Now, with a monthly check of $3,700 from the VA, he receives free healthcare and has been able to stop working.
Kelly told NPR he negotiated a 10 percent discount from Trajector and paid the bill in installments even though he found it, "a little bit steep. But if they got the job done, hopefully I don't have to worry about it again."
Still, the law states that "no fee or compensation of any nature" can be charged for preparing and filing initial disability claims.
"We DO NOT do claims consulting"
The federal government has had rules on the books to protect veterans' benefits since the Civil War era, when opportunistic lawyers were bilking vets out of their pensions.
But while the law today says that anyone assisting vets with initial disability claims must be accredited and cannot charge money, companies like Trajector maintain those requirements don't apply to them. The company says it stops short of actually preparing the necessary paperwork or directly filing disability claims for veterans.
Trajector said in a statement to NPR that it complies with the law and helps vets "understand, identify and document their medical conditions."
"We don't fill out your forms ourselves. We don't file your claims. We don't do any of that," the company's founder Jim Hill said in an interview posted on the company's website in July. "You do it yourself, and we give you a medical evidence packet to attach when you file for claims."
But that wasn't the case for some vets who spoke with NPR, who said Trajector did fill out and submit their VA paperwork.
Erik Jensen, 67, served for 30 years before retiring from the Navy as a Lt. Commander in 2007. Early in his career, he was a deep-water diver stationed throughout the Pacific. He wore a bulky wetsuit with a copper helmet that together weighed more than 200 lbs, which Jensen said took a toll on his body.
Jensen hired Trajector in late 2023 to help him claim disability for psoriatic arthritis that was waking him in the night with painful and frozen joints. He completed a detailed questionnaire from the company about his medical history and service record. Trajector then sent Jensen an email with a link to review and submit his "medical evidence packet."
Jensen later shared the link with NPR and allowed reporters to observe him accessing the document that the link led to. It included 28 pages of completed VA disability claim forms, including statements about Jensen's medical conditions written in the first person, none of which he said he wrote. The forms were preceded by an official VA fax coversheet with the agency's seal.
"All of that was filled out," he said.
Jensen also said he felt the paperwork exaggerated his arthritis symptoms and stated something that he felt was just wrong — that his sleep apnea was caused by service-related knee injuries. He said the two were "not even closely related" and that he hadn't planned to file for sleep apnea in the first place.
Jensen didn't want it to seem like he was lying on his forms. He became a registered nurse in the Navy after 15 years as a diver, so he had strong opinions on how to present his medical history. He told NPR that he planned to correct the inaccurate information that Trajector drafted in his claim, but accidentally clicked "submit" on the paperwork.
Jensen then saw a confirmation screen that said, "Your application has been successfully faxed to VA."
Trajector denies that the company files forms.
"We DO NOT do claims consulting, claims preparation, or filing," said Steven Zenofsky, Trajector's director of communications and public relations, in an email to NPR.
NPR asked Trajector to explain the apparent contradiction between such statements and the VA forms that had been filled out for Jensen along with the screenshot of his fax confirmation.
"The screenshot you provided is not from Trajector Medical, nor does it show or state that it is," Zenofsky said. "We stand by our statements."
A "separate" site
The link Jensen clicked to review and submit his claim originated from a Trajector email and opened to a site called Benefit Karma. Zenofsky characterized Benefit Karma as "a separate and secure external software platform, which is freely and publicly available for use by all, which allows veterans to populate, review, edit and file their own forms."
Documents show Benefit Karma has ties to Trajector. The trademark for Benefit Karma is held by Ampry Holdings, an LLC registered to Trajector founders Jim Hill and Gina Uribe. Benefit Karma and Ampry Holdings use the same Cheyenne, Wyo. business address that is listed in Trajector's last annual report to the Florida Secretary of State as Jim Hill's address.
A former employee of Trajector Inc., Trajector Medical's parent company, said Benefit Karma was a new product Trajector Inc. launched in 2024. It was considered "another vertical of the business," the employee said.
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NPR observed the filing process with additional veterans, following links in Trajector emails that directed them to Benefit Karma. There, they were able to review and submit prepared VA forms. Those vets told NPR they did not "populate" their forms, as Zenofsky described, because they were already completed. Once they clicked "submit," they could view a confirmation page stating that their disability claims had been faxed to VA.
"They make it sound like I wrote that," Kelly told NPR while reviewing his VA forms from Trajector. "Those aren't my words. I'm not gonna lie."
NPR spoke to former VA Inspector General Michael Missal, who served as the agency's top watchdog from 2016 to January 2025, about how Trajector uses Benefit Karma to outsource the submission of disability claims.
"I don't think that's a clever way to get around the law," said Missal. "Trajector being involved, and whether it's a company that they're behind that actually pushes the button, they're the one that's really facilitating the filing."
"It certainly violates the spirit and I would say it would violate the meaning of the law as well."
Excerpts from Erik Jensen's "Medical Evidence Packet" from Trajector. Top: VA fax coversheet, the first page of 60 in his claim. Middle: The second page of Jensen's claim, a VA form requesting disability compensation. Bottom: A page of Jensen's claim describing hip pain from his 15 years as a Navy diver. Jensen told NPR he did not write the first-person narrative; it was pre-populated in Benefit Karma when he received it from Trajector.
Jensen's claim resulted in VA increasing his existing rating from 60 to 100 percent disabled. His claim package from Trajector also included 31 pages of supplementary medical evidence and written opinions from medical professionals. Still, he told NPR he wished he had sought free help instead from VFW, where he is a member.
"I'm embarrassed to say I ended up paying $12,000," said Jensen.
CallBot - "That was the bloodhound."
Navy veteran Vernell Armstrong hired Trajector last year to claim complications from an eye surgery she had while in service. But her claim was denied. Armstrong said she gave the company her decision letter and thought she was done dealing with them. She then undertook a separate process entirely on her own to appeal the decision with VA.
After receiving a favorable rating from the VA this year, and not speaking with a Trajector employee for months, she said, Armstrong was "more than surprised" to see a bill for $877.55 arrive in her inbox.
"It said, 'Congratulations on your rate increase.' And I said, 'How the hell, pardon my French, how do y'all know? Because I haven't talked to anybody and I haven't told anybody anything.'"
When Trajector staff began calling and emailing her multiple times a week to pursue payment, Armstrong said she refused to pay.
"Why are y'all billing me for something that you didn't do?" she asked. "I did all of this legwork on my own."
The answer likely lies in what workers inside the company refer to as "CallBot."
CallBot is a computerized auto-dialing system that persistently dials into the VA Benefits Hotline, a system meant for veterans to inquire about the amount of their monthly disability check. Trajector asks its clients to report any rating increase they receive to the company on an honor system. But the company also uses the hotline as a side door to track the status of the vets' claims.
Former workers told NPR that in the early days of the company, the small staff would divvy up a printed list containing each client's name, social security number and birthday. They would call the VA hotline, input the numbers manually and record the output: the vet's latest check amount. If the amount was higher than what the veteran was receiving when they hired the company, it triggered an invoice.
As Trajector's client list grew, software developers built a program to automate the calls, according to a former tech worker. They named it CallBot.
"They'd get their increase and then CallBot would pick up the change," one software engineer told NPR. "That was the bloodhound."
CallBot could make as many as 20 concurrent calls to the VA and would run for days at a time on behalf of tens of thousands of veterans, former employees said.
"We were calling and abusing that phone line," a software developer told NPR.
Former workers told NPR that at one point the VA began blocking the numbers Trajector was using to dial the hotline, in turn choking off collections and revenue for the company.
NPR asked VA to weigh in on how claims consultant companies use the Benefits Hotline, but VA declined to comment.
When NPR spoke to Marine Corps veteran Enrique Miranda Cardenas about how Trajector's CallBot system works, he said he didn't think the company should be monitoring him and other vets that way. Miranda Cardenas hired Trajector last year for help claiming disability linked to injuries sustained in a car crash while he was deployed to Japan in the nineties.
"It's a misuse of people's trust and the system. The system is made for veterans, to ensure that they're being updated," said Miranda Cardenas.
While vets told NPR they had no idea Trajector was tracking their claims this way, they had agreed in their contracts to let the company use personally identifying information to access VA reporting systems.
"Trajector Medical only accesses information that a veteran has expressly authorized us in writing to access on their behalf," the company said in a statement to NPR.
Former employees on Trajector's software and invoicing teams told NPR that the company failed to purge inactive clients like Armstrong from CallBot's list despite repeated client complaints. In turn, the system can't distinguish whether Trajector's team did the work to generate an increase. They said management was aware that the CallBot system was making many veterans upset, but it also drives profit.
"The problem is that with that system, it doesn't tell you why they got an increase. It was all blind," an invoicer said.
"There was no stopping point. Every increase that they got after that, we would just assume that it was by us. "
Trajector did not directly acknowledge its use of CallBot. "A client agrees in their signed service agreement to self-report to us if they receive a rating increase," Trajector told NPR in a statement. "If a client does not self-report, we will send them a draft invoice and instruct them to call us if they believe there is an error."
"They called me relentlessly." - Telling vets 3x a day to pay up
After Miranda Cardenas submitted his claim through Trajector, VA requested additional evidence from his medical providers to make a decision on his claim. He said Trajector refused to help him gather the additional records and he spent hours calling his providers and gathering documentation.
Then, when his claim was successful, Trajector billed him more than $12,000. Miranda Cardenas paid the company $1,300 but refused to settle the balance because he wound up doing so much work on his claim himself. He told NPR the company has been pursuing him aggressively to collect on the outstanding amount.
" They were calling just about every day, sometimes even twice or three times a day," Miranda Cardenas told NPR. " I said, 'Don't be hounding me for stuff. You didn't do what you needed to do… I don't feel that it's right for me to pay you what you're claiming that I need to pay you.'"
Trajector told NPR in a statement that Miranda Cardenas "was fully informed about the nature of our support."
"They called me relentlessly," said Dwayne, a Navy veteran who had a similar experience. He said Trajector pursued him for payment for three years and only recently stopped calling. He didn't want to use his last name because he fears a renewed onslaught of collection emails and phone calls.
Dwayne said Trajector wasn't responsible for his rating increase because his initial claim through the company was denied. He said he hired an attorney to appeal with VA. When the appeal was successful, Dwayne said, Trajector sent him a bill for $3,600.
"It used to be three times a day calling," said Dwayne. "Just consistent barrages of calls."
Trajector's invoicing and collections staff told NPR that they often fielded daily torrents of angry calls and emails from upset veterans facing a bill they didn't feel was fair.
An invoicer said, "I would get emails back, 'You guys did not help,' like angry emails. 'You guys did not help me get to this. I did this on my own.' So essentially, sometimes we were billing people for increases that we didn't even help them get."
Another former staffer reported, "There was so much turnover because who wants to be yelled at by veterans all day?"
She told NPR her team was pressured to hit aggressive collections quotas and Trajector incentivized speed with a bonus structure that made up the majority of her paycheck. She worked a list of up to 150 clients daily and the conversations with vets were not easy.
" I didn't know that I was gonna be like a debt collector, banging on people's doors, 'Gimme your money,'" she said.
"Across all industries, individuals working in collections are routinely subjected to verbal abuse, frustration, and anger from customers," Trajector told NPR. "This is considered a challenging and frequent reality of the profession and collections agents often become the involuntary target for a customer's negative feelings, making the constant exposure to hostility an expected part of their job."
Several vets NPR spoke to said they were never turned over to third-party debt collectors or reported to the credit bureaus by Trajector. And several former employees told NPR this policy was quietly acknowledged by management.
One former invoicer said, "That's when I started wondering, 'Are we supposed to be doing this?'"
"They don't want it in the press that third-party collection agencies are collecting on disabled veterans," a former employee in Trajector's collection department said.
"Any collection outreach can feel overwhelming, and we take client feedback very seriously," Trajector told NPR. "Our communications are designed, monitored, and audited to ensure they are professional and respectful."
Legal experts in the field of debt collection regulation told NPR it's possible that Trajector decided not to involve third-party debt collectors because doing so would open the collectors to lawsuits from veterans who may feel the debt is legally dubious. Trajector's contracts require veterans to agree to binding arbitration, which prevents them from filing suit against the company. Experts said lawsuits mentioning the company could draw scrutiny to its business practices.
Congress weighs action.
Two decades ago, Congress changed the federal law surrounding veterans disability claims. In 2006, the U.S. was at war in Iraq and there was a feeling vets needed more options to navigate an increasingly complex claims system. Against that backdrop, Congress voted to eliminate the criminal penalties for breaking the law against charging veterans for help with initial disability claims. It was a half-measure at best, and lawmakers never resolved this contradiction: the ban is on the books, but there are no penalties to enforce it.
Entrepreneurial veterans leapt into that legal gray area, realizing they could help fellow vets and make good money. The number of these claims consulting outfits has exploded over the last 10 years.
The VA has little recourse besides sending warning letters. NPR and our partner, the nonprofit newsroom The War Horse, obtained letters the VA sent to 40 claims companies — ranging from companies with hundreds of employees to one-person shops. The larger claims companies appear to be ignoring these letters with impunity. Trajector received two such letters in June 2017 and January 2022.
In the 2017 letter, VA Chief Counsel David J. Barrans quoted a litany of marketing materials from Trajector – then called Vet Comp & Pen Medical Consulting – that "strongly suggest that your organization is unlawfully assisting in the preparation, presentation and prosecution of claims before VA. By assisting in preparing claims, you and your organization are violating the laws governing accreditation."
Barrans signed off with a warning to Hill: "By law, you, individually, and your organization, must immediately cease all preparation of and assistance in claims for VA benefits."
Trajector responded to both letters to VA contending that it wasn't breaking the law. The company told NPR in a statement, "We take any communication from VA seriously. When these letters were received, we promptly responded in writing and in the nearly four to eight years since then, have received no reply from VA."
The company also told NPR that its work falls within laws and regulations that "guarantee a veteran's right to submit private medical evidence and require VA to consider private medical documentation."
"VA is not a law enforcement agency but is fully committed to preventing bad actors from taking advantage of Veterans," said VA Press Secretary Pete Kasperowicz in a statement to NPR. "When VA sees signs of fraud or suspicious behavior, it works with the appropriate law enforcement authorities to protect Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors."
NPR obtained through a public records request more than 50 complaints about Trajector reported to the Office of the Attorney General in Florida, the state where Trajector is based. Attorney General James Uthmeier's office declined to comment on whether it has investigated or taken any action against the company.
Retired Army Colonel Paul Kantwill served as an assistant director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau leading the Office of Servicemember Affairs. He told NPR he's aware of such complaints from veterans who felt taken advantage of by claims assistance companies.
"If I still ran the Office of Servicemembers Affairs, these complaints would be at the top of my priority list and would be taken very seriously," Kantwill said.
VSOs, the VFW in particular, are pushing lawmakers to regulate the claims industry with the slogan "Don't feed the sharks." On the industry side, the field has grown large enough that claims companies formed a trade organization led by Peter O'Rourke, a former VA official in the first Trump administration.
Competing bills have percolated in Congress for several years and claims company executives have been called before lawmakers as recently as this year. One bill would reinstate criminal penalties. This bill, called the GUARD VA Benefits Act, is favored by several of the oldest VSOs, which offer claims assistance for free.
Some of the larger claims companies favor the competing bill, called the CHOICE for Veterans Act, which would regulate the business and cap the charges at $12,500, in its current draft. But congressional staffers told NPR where to set that fee-cap is contentious.
Some states have enacted a patchwork of laws to regulate how claims companies operate locally. Last year, Louisiana adopted a version of the CHOICE Act, while this summer Alabama passed a GUARD Act-like ban on claims companies.
"VA continues to examine this issue," said Kasperowicz. "We also want to make sure Veterans have choices, particularly if they aren't happy with whatever options might be available to them for free."
The companies argue they allow vets to vote with their feet and pay for assistance if they need the extra help. Millions of Americans similarly pay for help filing their taxes, for example, though some of these companies can charge vets 10 or 20 times what they might pay for tax help. And there's a wide range, with some companies charging vets $20,000 or more in some cases and others charging as little as $1,250.
"In no world should you be charging $10,000 for a VA claim. It doesn't cost that," said Lukas Simianer, the founder and CEO of VetClaims.AI, an Austin, Texas-based startup.
VetClaims.AI charges a flat, up-front fee of $1,250 with a money-back guarantee. Simianer told NPR his company rarely spends more than five hours assisting a vet with their claim.
The 33-year-old founder said the GUARD Act goes too far in limiting veterans' choice, but that he supports fee caps to shield vets from exploitation.
Congress may decide to impose such limits on claims companies. But until then, lower-cost startups like Simianer's could put downward pressure on the fees being charged by more established firms like Trajector.
"I often describe myself as a combat capitalist," he told NPR. "I believe that capitalism works for a reason. I think that the best solution will prevail."
A mission to help vets, that workers say eroded over time.
Like many of these firms, Trajector was started by people who'd been frustrated by the VA disability benefits system.
Hill, a Navy veteran and entrepreneur, co-founded the company in 2014 with Gina Uribe, a nurse and former VA medical examiner running a small claims consultancy from her home. After Uribe helped him with his own VA claim, Hill pitched her a vision to use technology and automation to multiply her impact. They started the company with a few staff working from Hill's spare bedroom and Uribe's dining room table in Gainesville, Fla.
There was plenty of demand from vets who wanted help. Trajector, originally called Vet Comp & Pen Medical Consulting, acquired smaller firms and by 2021 employed a global workforce of more than 1,300 employees across offices in Florida, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.
"I was inspired," one early employee who no longer works at Trajector told NPR. When she started working with Uribe, she remembers they were quickly helping scores of vets and drastically improving their lives.
"All of a sudden they're getting this disability check that's just gonna turn everything around for them… I'm like, wow, that's real power."
As Trajector grew though, former workers say things started to change.
None of the 11 former employees NPR interviewed for this story wanted to use their names, citing fear of retribution from the company. Many said as time went on, the company focused too much on maximizing profits.
"All of a sudden our calls became all about collection," an early employee said. "They used to be about gathering other information and moving people through the claims process. And then it became about following up, 'Did you win? Did you get a check? Can you help us out?'"
Trajector Inc., parent company to Trajector Medical, had plans to make a public offering, filing a draft registration with the SEC in August 2021. But in January 2022 they withdrew the paperwork.
Former workers who spoke to NPR said the company's rank-and-file employees want to help veterans. But many said that's been hard.
"You can't have this many customers that are upset," said one former manager.
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