Military Sentinel - consumer protection website Published Sept. 28, 2009 LITTLE ROCK AIR FORCE BASE, Ark. -- Military members, Department of Defense civilian employees and their families are targets of specific consumer-fraud scams and face many consumer-related problems. In response, the DoD and the Federal Trade Commission launched the Military Sentinel Web site to improve consumer protection for DoD personnel. The Military Sentinel is designed to centralize online collection of consumer-fraud and identity-theft complaints from DoD personnel, while providing easy access to consumer education and fraud-prevention resources and materials. Online complaints forwarded to the FTC have resulted in hundreds of fraud investigations and the return of millions of dollars. The Military Sentinel is located at http://www.consumer.gov/military. It is modeled after the FTC's complaint database, the Consumer Sentinel. However, only the Military Sentinel is capable of centralizing DoD complaints and targeting practices that affect military members and DoD employees. DoD personnel may file complaints on the Military Sentinel public Web site from their personal computers or may seek advice from the Legal Office. Complaints are forward to more than 550 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., Canada and Australia, and are monitored according to branch of service and military installation. This centralization of complaints provides military members and DoD civilians with vital information to better protect them in the marketplace. For example, DoD complainants receive an FTC response tailored to their specific complaint. Also, the FTC will make available quarterly charts and graphs for the Military Sentinel to show consumer-fraud and identity-theft trends and their prevalence at each military installation. (Courtesy of the 19th Airlift Wing Legal Office)