Category: Phony soldiers

  • Kayenta Veterans Organization replies back.

    I got a response from the Kayenta Veterans Organizationafter I replied back to their earlier email in regards to Jasper Lake.

    Email 1.
    May I ask who you represent and wht you do?
    pbronston

    Email 2.
    My Veterans Orgaization Chairman just informed me that, he has talked with yoo on this. So I wil have no morte commmunication with you. Have a nice life. I have no proof who you are and no credentials why you need to be asking about this.

    Oh and guess what is new on the their website.

  • So, Sean Beery called today…

    I just got off the phone with Sean Beery who called to apologize for his malfeasance as far as his bio on Facebook and company website which we wrote about earlier this weekend. I noticed that both have been pulled like he told me he was going to do.

    Beery had no explanation for the reason that he was trying to deceive the public. He explained that he tried to complete Ranger School but broke his ankle in the last few weeks. I don’t know about that, but I have no evidence to prove otherwise.

    He said he’d attended a couple of Blackwater firearms courses, but he was never a Blackwater firearms instructor. Beery also copped to the other misinformation we pointed out.

    He tried to explain to me about the information that is incorrect on his 2-1, but i told him that he should have corrected that before he got out of the Army. So that’s a cautionary tale for you guys who are still in the military…make sure your records are straight.

    Beery ended his phone call by thanking us for “lifting this burden” of deceit from his shoulders. I told him that we’re not removing the post and he seemed fine with that.

    I’m sure there’s enough in his record that he can still point to with pride that is correct and I don’t want to put him out of business, but with the Stolen Valor Act in danger of extinction, the public blogs and search engines are the only recourse we veterans have to police our ranks for the time being.

    At least, he didn’t try to do like Jon Cryer, the Chippendale SEAL when he called and attempted to convince me that his story was true.

  • Phony steals $60k from Legion post

    I’m sure he was only using his freedom of speech to relieve his fellow Legionnaires of the burden of more than $60 thousand.

    In 2008, [Joe T. ] Joseph was forced out of the post after a fellow member questioned his membership eligibility.

    The Legion’s state and national headquarters determined Joseph was ineligible because his discharge paperwork showed no evidence of active federal service during wartime.

    An audit by accounting firm Kisiel & Rudnik determined that $62,127.89 in funds weren’t deposited into the account between 2006 and 2008, including more than $53,000 in 2007 alone, according to the criminal complaint.

    During that time, Joseph was a member of the post and the financial officer who had responsibility to take control of various funds and deposit them in the post’s bank accounts, the complaint states.

    Thanks to TPM for the link.

  • Sean Beery: When good ain’t good enough

    Chester sends us some stuff on Sean Beery, the director of Volusia County Gun and Hunt Club down in Florida. This is how he presents himself on his website – a Ranger-qualified scout sniper who jumped into Panama and led reconnaissance and infantry platoons;


    Well, his records tell a story about a perfectly honorable career, but one which bears little resemblance to his own narrative;
    (more…)

  • Phony tries to get VA benefits

    An article from my old stomping grounds recounts the story of 53-year-old Marc Restucci who tried to weasel some benefits out of the VA for injuries he claimed to have received in the Grenada invasion;

    Authorities say he submitted false military forms to the VA in an effort to increase his disability benefits. On the forms, he listed among his decorations, the Purple Heart medal, which is given to those injured or killed in combat.

    Court papers suggest Restucci claimed he was shot multiple times while serving during the conflict in Grenada in 1983.

    Authorities say he even submitted a phony Purple Heart award certificate. Assistant U.S. Attorney Craig Gestring said, “Those documents were reviewed by the Veterans Affairs folks in the benefits department and they had a concern about it. They referred it to the criminal investigations who then followed up and it was determined that those documents were, in fact, fraudulent.”

    Restucci, a former licensed nurse at the VA hospital in Canandaigua, did serve in the Army from 1976 to 1979 and served in the Army National Guard through 1998.

    As always, I’m sure it’s just another poor guy trying to speak freely and there’s nothing fraudulent about that.

  • Robert Duft, super sniper Pt. III

    Robert Duft

    We wrote about Robert Duft last month here and here. He claimed that he was a Special Forces sniper in Vietnam, that he’d had a high draft number at the age of 16 and enlisted when he was 17 and spent his 18th birthday in Vietnam. This is from the article about him in his local paper;

    “Special Forces are the first in for any situation. We’re intelligence gatherers, advisers. We go in covert; we don’t want anyone to know we are there,” Duft said. “We go in, get the job done, and get out without anyone knowing. Sometimes we stay behind enemy lines for months.”

    He became a Green Beret in the early 1970s during the Vietnam War because of his precision in shooting firearms.

    Well, the good folks at POW Network sent us his records this morning. If he was “in covert” he was so covert the Army didn’t even know that he was in the service let alone Vietnam;
    (more…)

  • Email about Jasper Lake.

    It has been a while since I last talked about this, so when I got this email this morning that surprised me. Everyone remembers Jasper Lake the person that was trying to get people to send him money to get his alleged Medal of Honor. Well I received a email that claims that everything we know about his is rumors from envy.

    As far as we know the case is still before the Senate Arms Committee, Governer J. Brewwer and Senater McCain have reveiwed it.

    We read the DD 214 of JAsper Lake of his combat actions and it does reflect his actions.
    Remeber he is not a MOH receipient yet, he is a nominee for the MOH. Too many rumors and envy has cirulated about this case. Our organization is still pursueing this issue. IT will be up to congress to approve it.

    I sent a email to him to see the supporting documents. We shall see if they are willing to produce.

  • Phony POW general


    The good folks at POW Network sent us a link to a phony they busted recently by the name of Fermijon Marrero who was featured in an article in the New Rochelle Main Street Connect;

    The native of Spain was a prisoner of war from Dec. 15, 1966 until May 1968. The Vietnamese forced him and his cellmate to work for 16 hours each day in the rice patties while up to his knees in cow dung. The enemy only fed him twice a week, and all he received was an ashtray sized dish of rice filled with maggots.

    But Marrero said he had to eat the creatures because they were his only source of protein. He slept in a tiger cage that was far too small for him. One day, he and his cellmate ran when the guards turned their heads. He had contracted malaria, which he said he still has to this day, but he ran until he joined up with the 12th Cavalry in Laos.

    Nice story except that he was a private with an abbreviated career well after the war in Vietnam ended;

    So, journalist Andrew Meola was more interested in writing a story than doing his job and informing the public.