First these Army families lost their loved ones. Then the man assigned to help them took their money.

As she mourned the sudden death of her son, a 26-year-old Army sergeant felled by a heart condition, Sharon Hartz learned some surprising news:

She would receive a death benefit and life insurance totaling half a million dollars.

But she said the Army’s casualty assistance officer, who had helped her with the funeral arrangements, told her she first had to meet with an Army financial counselor.

“[He] insisted that we be educated on the finances so they were properly handled,” she said.

Hartz and the officer drove to Fort Dix, where she first sat down with Caz Craffy, an Army reservist whose 9-to-5 civilian job was offering advice about money to Army families.

Craffy was “very charismatic,” Hartz said. “Very, very friendly, very welcoming.”

That turned out to be a façade. Craffy was a con man, who has now pleaded guilty to bilking Hartz and dozens of other Gold Star families — the survivors of service members who died on active duty — out of millions of dollars.

“I’ve lost a little over $200,000,” she said. “Now I’m up in the air. I can’t afford to retire. I feel taken advantage of. I’m embarrassed. I feel like I let my son down, because, you know, this was his way of taking care of me and my children. So it’s devastating.”

Prosecutors say Craffy was only supposed to be giving families generic financial guidance. Instead, he also had a second civilian job as an investment manager and handled their investments in violation of Army rules. Court records say he convinced Hartz and other Gold Star relatives to hand him their money — then racked up huge commissions even as he made unwise investments that plummeted in value.

Natasha Cruz-Bevard signed $500,000 over to Craffy after she lost her husband, staff sergeant and Iraq combat veteran Rodney Bevard, to suicide.

“When they explained all that to me and I opened up my statements, I saw that in a short amount of time I lost a lot of money, close to $90,000 in just commissions alone,” she said. “I’ve lost like $260,000 overall.”

Cruz-Bevard said she told Craffy she wanted to invest very conservatively, but she learned later he had listed her as seeking an “aggressive” risk profile.

Cruz-Bevard and Hartz said Craffy appeared to have…