Category: Phony soldiers

[Editor’s Note: This Paul Tillson lives in New Jersey – he’s not the Paul Tillson in Oregon who we like immensely and served honorably without embellishing his military record]

I’m sure you remember this guy, Paul Tillson, who beclowned himself at his own wedding with this load of crap;

Well, we finally got our hands on his FOIA, so let’s see how much of his stuff matches up, shall we;

Well, he’s a Staff Sergeant, not a Sergeant First Class. He has nine months total of active duty, and three months were Basic Training and Advance Individual Training. He was infantry in the New Jersey National Guard until May ’91 when he became a supply sergeant, but oddly enough his 2-1 says he was a squad leader supply sergeant.

Then in August he was activated and sent to Camp Doha, Kuwait with a Heavy Maintenance and Supply unit as the company clerk. That’s how he got the CIB that he thinks he earned – cuz being the company clerk in a mess kit repair company after Desert Storm ended is just like being infantry in Desert Storm.

Someone who knew him at the time told us that he faked an injury and was returned early from Kuwait. He came back in January ’92. That same person told us he started faking the Gulf War Syndrome after his return, I wish they’d change the name of GWS to National Guard Syndrome, because those are the only guys who seem to get it. If there are any DVA OIG guys out there, you might want to look into that.

Then he went back to his infantry duties in the NJNG until he left the service in 1993. So he spent ten years total in the Guard, and nine months of Federal service. So he really had to scurry to get all of those medals. Here’s the other half of his FOIA;

Yeah, that’s quite a bit less than what’s on his uniform. Here’s his 2-1 to support my recitation his military service;

It turns out that Paul married a Brazilian woman. That’s why, when we could see the other pictures, there was another guy in what looked like a foreign uniform. That was Paul’s new brother-in-law in his Brazilian uniform.

Apparently, he tried to defraud the military with phony/forged military records for a disability claim and it didn’t work, but his forgeries still exist. He also failed in his attempt to defraud Odyssey Cruise lines when he sued them when he fell out of their deck chair. Those were the “war wounds” he reportedly showed the photographer who took the pictures at his wedding. Who goes around showing everyone their wounds, anyway?

And, oh, yeah, if you can’t tell by the pictures, Tollson’s brother-in-law (his sister’s husband) owns an Army/Navy surplus store.

This guy’s records are a big question mark. He’s wearing a CIB, but according to his records, he was a commo guy in Vietnam, so there is no way he’s authorized to wear a CIB. He’s also wearing infantry brass with the blue background and a blue rope which he’s also not authorized to wear. But his FOIA says he was awarded a CIB;

But then I’ve never seen a FOIA that listed Letters of Commendation and Certificates of Achievement, either. So all of that makes me suspicious. Here’s his record of assignments from his Form 2-1;

The dates of his assignments coincide to the history of his two Ranger units, according to the 75th Ranger Regiment Association. But like I said, if he altered his military records to add the CIB, there’s no reason to believe he didn’t alter his assignments, too. The fact that he’s listed as a 05B20 while he was in Advanced Individual training is suspicious, too. I’m sure he wasn’t a Sergeant E-5 after four months of service.

And here’s a picture of him wearing a green beret at the Wall, and that’s a Purple Heart and Ranger scroll on his chest;

According to the Special Forces Association membership rules, he’s not eligible to be a member based on his assignments to Ranger units, so the green beret thing is right out.

You and I both know from looking at these records that he’s not authorized all of the infantry stuff, but how that CIB got in his records, I’ll never know, well, unless he gives up the ghost and tells us the truth. Not holding my breath.

Thanks to the folks at Scotty’s Hideaway, for the stuff.

Our buddy, Taco Bell sent us a link from his blog The SandGram to a phony SEAL he found on Don Shipley’s Facebook page;

Dude says he’s 33 years old, but he’s wearing the Kuwait Liberation Medal and the Saudi Arabia Defense Medal, so he must’ve joined when he was 12. Taco wonders what strings he had to pull for the age waiver.

He looks like he might have been a SEAL’s Q-tip once. What is it with the people in New Jersey, anyway?

We wrote about Carl John Pequignot earlier this month here and here. Thanks to Hondo, we’ve been in contact with Vivian Sade at the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, where she has spent weeks researching Pequignot’s records as well as the history of the Second World War Pacific campaign – she did a yeoman’s job of correcting Pequignot’s story after all of these decades in her article entitled “Navy shoots down veteran’s war stories“;

[A]ccording to Navy records, Pequignot was never in battle and never left the U.S. during his military service. There is no official documentation that would indicate he was a POW, and archivists at Truman’s presidential library said they have no record of a meeting. In fact, the name Pequignot does not appear at all.

A convicted thief and bank robber after the war, Pequignot has insisted for years that the Navy lost all of his overseas records. But military records obtained by The Journal Gazette from the National Archives and Records Administration in St. Louis seem to account for almost every day Pequignot was in the service. Nothing in the records corroborates any of his military stories.

Of course, Pequignot complains that the stories he’s told are all true and he’s disappointed that the Navy has turned against him.

Probably not as disappointed as the state senator who pinned a Silver Star on him, a Silver Star for which there seems to be no paperwork anywhere on the planet. Or as disappointed as the veterans’ group that had tried to get Senator Dick Luger’s office to get Pequignot awarded a Medal of Honor. Or as disappointed as all of the folks who believed all of his tales all of these decades to include at least two journalists in the Fort Wayne press who had to walk back their articles about his daring-do. The other reporter was Kevin Leininger of The News-Sentinel.

ADDED: Vivian writes to point out that Pequignot also fooled the Library of Congress, but that they’ve removed the video that we included in the first post we wrote about Pequignot. She also wrote about that this morning in her companion article “Navy vet caught on tape, yet denies the interview“;

In the recording, Pequignot talks about being in a boat when the group hit a mine in November or December 1943. Ten of 14 men were killed. Pequignot and three others survived at sea and were taken as prisoners four days later by a Japanese submarine, he said on tape.

Pequignot does not appear in any of the POW lists for that period which are quite complete, said Jonn Lilyea, a retired infantry platoon sergeant who served in Desert Storm and has a popular military blog, “This ain’t hell, but you can see it from here.”

The 6th Army Ranger Battalion performed a POW rescue in January 1945 at Cabanatuan in the incident made famous in the movie “The Great Raid,” Lilyea said. But in early 1944, the group was being formed to lead an invasion of the Philippine Islands that would not occur for six more months.

Kristen Moulton of the Salt lake City Tribune writes that the phony POW we discussed the other day, Dave Groves is compounding his fakery by bringing a shyster into the mix and making his wife lie for him;

“He’s a typical liar,” said Mike McGrath, historian of Nam-Pow, a nonprofit organization of Vietnam prisoners of war. “There are 540 of us still alive from Vietnam, and we have 3,000 wannabees who want to be us.”

Groves, who has hired an attorney after a week of online challenges to his truthfulness, insists he was a POW who for unexplained reasons does not appear in the Pentagon’s database.

“We are retaining legal counsel. Until then we have no further comment except to say these accusations are entirely false and defamatory,” Groves’ wife, Fran Groves, said Friday afternoon.

Yeah, I want to meet the lawyer who has so few scruples that he’d take this case which is a slam dunk against Groves. Word on the street is that Utah’s veterans ain’t lettin’ this one go and the needles are pointed down at Groves. I’m just hoping that Groves’ lawyer ends up Tuesday morning at the Mineral County Courthouse in the “I’m here to sue TAH” line.

Louisiana state fire marshall State Fire Marshal Butch Browning has been allowed to retire when he was spotted on several occasions wearing military medals on his uniform when it was confirmed that he never served in the military.

“We’ve been informed that Mr. Browning never served in the military, yet he was wearing military ribbons awarded to every branch of the military service that span World War II, the Korean war and the Kosovo campaign,” [Rafael Goyeneche, president of the Metropolitan Crime Commission] said. “That’s problematic.” From WWLTV4;

Browning’s departure was announced in a press release Tuesday afternoon by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. The statement did not address the state investigation, simply stating that Browning was leaving for a job in the private sector.

Browning says he received the medals while he was a fire chief at another department and that he’s not aware of any investigation (WAFB9);

State Fire Marshal Butch Browning retired from his job Tuesday effective immediately. Browning says he is not the target of any investigation and resigned to take a job as a superintendent at a plant in Ascension Parish. Browning says he received the job offer several months ago and it was “too good to pass up.” Browning told 9NEWS he was not aware that the Inspector General has an ongoing investigation against the Fire Marshal’s Office.

These shitbags are everywhere, apparently.

James sends us a link to the Marine Corps Times’ Gina Cavallaro reportage of the arrest of Skyler Whalen, who we discussed over a year ago when he was pretending to be a Gunnery Sergeant. Now it seems that he is pretending to be a police officer, and the cops aren’t amused;

An off-duty police officer caught Whalen wearing a badge, ballistic vest, handcuffs, radio and gun. Whalen said he was responding to a 911 emergency hang-up call. His fakery was clear, according to the police report.

Whalen fled in his Ford Explorer, then was stopped and taken into custody after admitting he was posing as a cop, the report said.

In his vehicle, police found the law enforcement gear, including a rifle and police department business cards with his name on them, the report said.

A passenger told Kingman police he believed he was on a real “police ride-along” with Whalen.

So do you think he’s finally learned his lesson? Well, according to his neighbors, when the police released Whalen, he went home and they saw him leaving in a Marine uniform.

Our buddy, Doug Sterner sent us some information on one of his major take downs in Salt Lake City, This is from the local TV station, ABC4 last year when Jackie Lee Climer was first arrested for embezzling thousands of dollars from his American Legion Post where he was the adjutant;

60 year-old Jackie Lee Climer, from Heber, is charged with embezzlement and unlawful acquisition and possession of a credit card.

Park City police say the American Legion noticed discrepancies in its accounts.

He was successfully convicted and sentenced to a year in the county jail. This is the letter Mr. Sterner received from the detective in the case;

Last year, I contacted you in regards to a man named Jackie Lee Climer. I had arrested Climer for embezzling over $30,000 from the Park City, Utah, American Legion Post. The more I dug, the more questionable this character became. You offered me great insight and advice concerning Climer’s DD-214 and military records.

I wanted to let you know that, based in part on your input, we successfully convicted Climer in a jury trial. He is serving the next year in the Summit County, Utah, jail. In one of the more gratifying experiences in my career, I executed a search warrant and ripped Climer’s “Combat Wounded” Purple Heart plates off his car right in front of him. Unfortunately, our adjoining county would not prosecute Climer for presenting his forged DD-214 because the statute of limitations had run out on him presenting the forged document for the original registration. I am eagerly awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Stolen Valor case, and am ready to reopen that case should the court, hopefully, honor our veterans and declare that this nonsense has to stop.

We need more detectives with that kind of spirit and conviction.

Here’s his forged DD214;

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