They built a business empire that cashes in on veterans. It's made millions - ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The Veteran Benefits Australia empire is the brainchild of friends Nick Flanigan and Tom Bailey. (Supplied)

From the outside, the only clues something was up in the industrial estate office building in Brisbane's south were the expensive cars with personalised plates clogging the driveway.

Inside, the lavishly decorated office had gold accents in the bathroom and chandeliers in the kitchen where staff had Monday lunches.

This was the heart of the Veteran Benefits Australia (VBA) empire — the brainchild of exercise physiologist Nick Flanigan and pharmacist Tom Bailey.

The organisation appeared to simply connect veterans to the taxpayer-funded care they needed.

But a Four Corners investigation has found that behind the scenes, the companies in the VBA network have made millions by turning veterans into valuable sales leads on an industrial scale.

A Christmas staff lunch in VBA's headquarters. (Supplied)

Veterans lured in by freebies and competitions on social media would end up on VBA's books, passed from one entity to another, each billing the Department of Veterans' Affairs for their services.

An internal email shows staff were told veterans should be told to sign over their DVA-funded GP care plans, worth thousands of dollars, to VBA, in order to access other forms of care like medicinal cannabis or "free" medication packs.

In other cases, veterans' DVA details were used for billing by multiple allied health practitioners they had never even spoken to.

Four Corners spoke to more than 50 current and former staff and clients and reviewed hundreds of pages of internal emails, company documents and corporate filings to piece together a system that enriched those at the top.

While dozens of individual practitioners working for companies in the ecosystem have been accused by DVA of overservicing and incorrect billing by DVA, the companies and the individuals running them have escaped scrutiny.

Nick and Tom open their office in Algester, in Brisbane's south. (Supplied)

After the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide found veterans were struggling to get the compensation and care they needed, the government responded by pumping more than half a billion dollars into the complex system to clear a backlog of claims and improve services.

The influx of money created an opportunity for a range of for-profit companies to cash in on connecting veterans to the care they needed.

Veteran Benefits Australia started as a "blog" which says it connects veterans to "independent" services.

But VBA itself is really a marketing funnel that feeds into what they referred to internally as "the Veteran Benefits Australia Ecosystem", a network of more than 70 companies, dozens providing services to veterans.

An internal diagram shows how companies in the VBA ecosystem worked together to bill DVA for different services for veterans, while other companies serviced the entities themselves, including a marketing company that billed the rest of the entities for "leads".

An internal document from 2025 shows just some of the entities in the VBA ecosystem. (Supplied)

Here's how it worked. Veterans would see a targeted ad offering anything from free headphones, backpacks and smart watches to dream holiday competitions.

Facebook ads targeting veterans from companies within the VBA network. (Facebook)

Next, veterans would get a call asking if they wanted a range of "free" DVA-funded services.

"If you say yes, then you've really opened the door for multiple calls. They're going to try to find every procedure, every process that they can put you through," Jon Hays, a former manager at one of the companies, Medibase Health, said.

"There was veterans calling saying, 'I'm being called every day of the week. I don't need that service. Why do they call me all the time?'" he said.

In some cases veterans had no idea who was calling them or what was being billed against their DVA number by practitioners they had never even spoken to.

The VBA marketing machine was working.

An internal email shows, as early as 2022, Nick Flanigan boasting that a business he and Tom Bailey co-owned had amassed a database with 180,000 veterans' details in it.

Nick (above) and Tom (below) seen here in a video promoting one of their other businesses, a car raffle. (Supplied)

The next year he emailed some of the entities to suggest a marketing campaign to "hit more aggressive KPIs and grow the database even more".

It was pitched as a way "to give back to the veterans community", but behind the scenes there was a plan to harvest another 10,000 veterans' details.

Once a winner was chosen, social workers would call those who missed out and offer them a $200 voucher — but only if the veteran signed up to their internal GP care program, which was billed to DVA.

Last year, another promotion to get a free smart watch included the disclaimer that veterans first had to complete 12 mental health sessions.

The freebie strategy enticed veterans and effectively unlocked the ability for companies in the ecosystem to bill DVA for the initial $90 social work call, plus hundreds of dollars more for repeated psychology and counselling services.

Veterans could then be referred onwards for more services like exercise physiology and medicinal cannabis.

Staff in a promotional video for Veteran Pathways, one of the VBA entities. (Supplied)

An internal email shows one veteran complaining some of the mental health check-in calls were "less than 5 minutes in duration most weeks, and regularly cut abruptly short".

They described it as "a scam primarily for you to probably get some form of government funding for each person you engage".

Many of the terms and conditions of the competitions ban veterans from making defamatory or derogatory public comments online, but email complaints show the feedback was scathing.

"You say 'no strings attached' but then you have to accept a 'social workers' call. This is disgraceful and misleading to veterans," one veteran wrote.

"You just want to get money from DVA not worried about the veteran," said another.

"You are scammers and cheats and…I am reporting you," a third veteran said.

Health providers aren't allowed to use advertising to offer inducements to DVA clients and there are strict rules about how companies can advertise services for veterans.

The ads have been running on Facebook unchecked, funnelling veterans into the ecosystem for years.

Internal photos from a 2024 leadership retreat obtained by Four Corners show Nick Flanigan highlighting the ecosystem's initiatives, including expanding social work services and a new program called "case conferencing".

Flanigan talks at a leadership retreat. (Supplied)

It was supposed to be a multidisciplinary meeting with a veteran's treating team to discuss how to best help them. But an internal email shows Flanigan saw them as a "commercially very attractive" opportunity he was keen to "maximise".

He suggested the ecosystem's entities could provide several allied health workers to discuss a veteran in a 15–20 minute meeting.

Former manager Jon Hays heard it being discussed before he left one of the VBA companies in 2024.

"It was attractive to them because they could bring in their podiatrist, their GP … all these people, and a social worker as well, and they could bill for it," he said.

Jon Hays was a manager at one of the VBA ecosystem's companies, Medibase Health. (Four Corners: Rob Hill)

Last year, social worker Katie Everingham saw in her clients' files that "case conferences" were being billed, but the notes seemed so generic she didn't think they even knew the veterans being discussed.

"It just indicated that someone had opened a DVA book of fees and built a business model around what you're able to bill. That's the sense that I got," she said.

"I don't think that the veteran themselves were engaged in that process at all. I'm concerned that maybe they hadn't even spoken to any of these professionals."

In a statement, Nick Flanigan said: "Any suggestion that I advised healthcare providers to act improperly or to exploit the Department of Veterans' Affairs funding system is factually incorrect."

An internal email shows Flanigan saw case conferencing as "commercially very attractive". (Supplied)

This practice is on DVA's radar. It has issued notices to 112 health practitioners around the country for conducting case conferences about veterans they'd never treated.

A key safeguard preventing DVA being billed for unnecessary services is a veteran's usual GP, who acts as an independent gatekeeper, only referring veterans to the services they really need.

But Four Corners has discovered the VBA ecosystem was using some internal GPs to sign off on referrals to services that were then provided by companies in the ecosystem.

In some cases, those doctors often never spoke to the patients at all, relying instead on details provided by other workers.

Margaret Faux says these businesses are "operating unchecked". (Four Corners: Amy Donaldson)

It's a practice that lawyer and medical billing expert Dr Margaret Faux says clearly doesn't meet DVA's rules but would be unlikely to be automatically flagged.

"The system that we have is an honour system. It is built on trust.

"It is not in the best interests of these vulnerable veterans that these corporations operate in this way, but they are operating unchecked," she said.

A graph obtained by Four Corners shows the amount DVA was paying out to social workers in Queensland, where VBA was based, exploded — at several points in 2024 and 2025 it reached more than $1 million a month.

DVA's spending on social workers in Queensland surged far beyond other states and territories. (Supplied)

"If DVA is just paying whatever anybody submits to them, then frankly, they only have themselves to blame," Dr Faux said.

In late 2024 the Department of Veterans' Affairs started sending warning notices to individual social workers working for VBA ecosystem companies.

Copies of warning notices obtained by Four Corners contain allegations that initial consultations were being delivered over the phone instead of in person, and billing for unusually high numbers of services on certain days.

Jon Hays was asked by the company he worked for to review their social workers' files.

"We discovered that some were doing [a] reasonable amount of calls, but then there was a small group that was doing calls that were two minutes, three minutes long."

Many of the social workers were new graduates facing difficult calls with traumatised and sometimes suicidal veterans.

"It was all about: 'Yeah, get that call, we'll get our share.' And that's disturbing," Hays said.

Last year, the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) was briefed by DVA that there could be as many as 200 social workers caught up in the scheme.

The VBA ecosystem's own internal accounting company processed invoices on behalf of social workers and other providers.

Margaret Faux said regardless of the circumstances, practitioners were personally liable.

"You may have these corporations putting pressure on the practitioners to bill, but it is the practitioners who will be held to account," she said.

"The corporations walk away scot-free, and the health workers at the bottom of the food chain are the ones who will likely get into a lot of trouble."

Katie Everingham quit her social work role at Veteran Pathways last year, as soon as she saw what had been billed under her provider number.

Katie Everingham raised her concerns about the company with DVA and the federal police. (Four Corners: Amy Donaldson)

The invoice had a billing code for an initial session "in rooms", meaning face-to-face. But she only did remote telehealth calls.

"That's when I kind of realised, using my provider number, that there was this fraudulent billing happening."

She raised it with her manager, who claimed the company was compliant.

She reported it to DVA and the Australian Federal Police, but has not heard of any action since.

In October, after sending even more warnings to individual providers, DVA also put some of the VBA companies on manual processing, slowing down their ability to bill.

Dozens of staff were made redundant, but the party wasn't over.

Flanigan said his Flanmas party was "a reflection of our appreciation for all that you guys do". (Supplied)

Late last year a Ferris wheel was delivered to Nick Flanigan's Sunshine Coast property for a no-expenses-spared Christmas party dubbed "Flanmas", featuring fire breathers, stilt walkers and carnival dancers with skirts adorned with champagne glasses.

He thanked colleagues, family and friends.

"Flanmas really is just a reflection of our appreciation for all that you guys do for us. I hope you guys can let your hair down and just let loose," he told the crowd.

Flanigan thanks guests at his "Flanmas" celebrations. (Supplied)

Both Nick Flanigan and Tom Bailey declined to be interviewed.

In a statement, Nick Flanigan said he had spent decades working to improve veterans' access to health care in a "complex and continually changing regulatory environment".

"These models were developed using the rules, professional advice and departmental guidance available at the time. Where the Department subsequently clarified or changed its interpretation of particular requirements, the relevant practices were reviewed and changed.

"Our purpose has always been to put veterans first, improve access to appropriate care and advocate for a system that delivers better health and wellbeing outcomes for veterans."

Tom Bailey said that "VBA is an information platform intended to help veterans … not a healthcare provider" and neither VBA nor himself is "involved in the day-to-day operations of the referenced healthcare providers and individual practitioners".

He said healthcare providers were "responsible for [their] own clinical care, professional standards, regulatory compliance, privacy obligations and billing practices".

Neither the Department of Veterans' Affairs nor the minister, Matt Keogh, agreed to an interview.

In a statement, the minister's office said the government has invested $203 million to strengthen DVA's compliance systems and is developing legislation to target harmful practices.

"I am committed to ensuring veterans are not taken advantage of," he said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the VBA ecosystem is still operating.

There are around a dozen social workers at its new Brisbane office, calling veterans who respond to social media ads and billing DVA.

As of this week there are still ads running promising everything from free nasal strips, headphones, white noise machines and smartwatches.

The terms and conditions available online state the watches are worth just $15.

A former employee said there were more than 1,000 abandoned in a storage cabinet in the office.

Watch Four Corners's full investigation Defenceless on ABC iview now.