PDHRA, transition exploits

Getting the signature for my Post-Deployment Health Risk Assessment took even less time than I'd thought, and then I was done for the day even before 9:30 rolled around. My only lament is that they only do that aspect of in-processing on Mondays and Fridays.

As I thought about the finance and personally procured moves, I came up with some questions.

• When you weigh your car empty and then full, you're supposed to fill the gas tank in both cases. However, what's to keep someone from running the gas tank low before getting the empty weight?
• If you weigh your full car at a CAT scale (Flying J or Pilot Travel Center), how do they know you're not standing on the scale with your car?
• Since you're allowed to get your full weight at the destination, who's to stop you from buying new furniture during your trip?
• Since compensation is based on weight, what stops a person from transporting a 55-gallon drum filled with water? Obviously that's fraudulent, but what besides the risk of prison would stop someone from doing that?

One thing that the finance briefer mentioned -- when PCSing from a high BAH area to a low one (for example, Hawaii to Fort Lee), it behooves a person to use up a lot of leave at the new location before signing in.

A person gets the new rate once they sign in to the new location. Hawaii's captain-with-dependents rate is $2898 per month; at Fort Lee it's $1347. In such a situation a person with 50 days of leave could request their 10 days permissive TDY from the losing unit and live for two months in the new area while collecting the higher rate.