Category: Phony soldiers

Our partners at Military Phonies share their work on Erick Phillipps who claims that he had 7 deployments as a Marine Corps Rifleman;

That’s odd because according to the National Personnel Records Center, he wasn’t in the Marine Corps – he was in the Army. He was discharged as an E-1 after about two years of active duty service with no follow-on Reserve duty. It looks like he had a deployment alright – to Kuwait, and that’s where he earned his Iraq Campaign Medal;

He had more service, but it wasn’t military;

Charles sends us the above photo which he claims was taken September 15th at a “Welcome home, veterans” event in Clarksburg, Tennessee. Frank Visconi showed up with the Marine Corps League color guard wearing his unearned Staff Sergeant rank, Bronze Star Medal, a Purple Heart and Combat Action Ribbon.

We first wrote about Frank in 2014, he soon afterward joined the Dutch Rudder Club and tried to shut us down, a useless endeavor. He took his phony certificates and valor thievery to the 6th Circuit Court, which ruled that he was stealing valor;

Although Visconi offered a large volume of evidence in support of his request for a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart, the documents that he provided, including the April 25, 1969 letter from William Kenneflick Jones, id. at 116, do not satisfy the applicable regulatory criteria. And, significantly, the citations that Visconi provided for the Bronze Star and Purple Heart, purportedly issued to him in 1969, do more to undermine his claim than to support it.

Visconi couldn’t get the outcome that he desired from the courts, so he just pinned it back on his uniform, apparently. Our tipster says that he told the color guard with whom they were associating, and Frank wasn’t with them at the event later that day.

Visconi was indeed a Marine and he served in Vietnam as a supply clerk;

We’ve been following the story about this guy, Michele Bocci, since the beginning of the year when KGWbegan writing about him when he began pretending to be a US Marine in order to rip off folks in Oregon. He was arrested in July and sentenced yesterday, according to KGW;

In addition to his six month jail sentence, Judge Sims ordered Bocci to undergo treatment, serve five years of probation, and write a letter of apology to his victims.

According to the article this wasn’t his first rodeo;

According to U.S. Department of Defense records, Michele Bocci was convicted of fraud in Germany in 2001. In 2002, he was convicted of computer fraud by German authorities. Later that year, Bocci served 20 days detention for fraud and embezzlement. In 2003, he was charged with seven counts of fraud, two counts of theft and title misuse in Germany. Police arrested him again in 2011. He was charged with five counts of fraud, falsifying documents and abuse of doctors’ titles. Records show he was charged with fraud in 2013.

By the time Bocci left Germany for the United States in June 2016, the prosecutor said Bocci had an active warrant for his arrest for fraud and theft.

Oregon slapped his wrist and he’ll be right back at after his jail term.

Once again, our partners at Military Phonies send thier work on a phony SEAL, this Gerald Fairman fellow. He’s also the Post Commander of American Legion Post 183 in Fern Park, Florida.

You can see from his ribbon rack that he not only claims that he’s a SEAL, but also that he was wounded in Vietnam.

The Navy disagrees, though. They think he only served less than eleven months and that he was trained to be an Aviation Boatswain’s Mate and that he was discharged as an E-3. They also only remember awarding him the National Defense Service Medal.

The NPRC says that he served on USS Shreveport (LPD-12) and during late 1971-early 1972 they were generally floating around the Caribbean on training shakedown cruises out of Guantanamo, no where near Vietnam. In the summer months of 1971 and 1972, they took some midshipmen on training cruises to Northern Europe and then returned to Norfolk. So he’s lying about Vietnam, too.

Because of the time period during which he briefly served (depending on the character of his real discharge), Fairman would have been qualified to join the Legion and be the Post Commander without the bling, so he pinned that stuff on for himself. I guess he never thought that wearing a SEAL Trident is like turning on a neonlight over his highly polished dome.

AverageNCO found an article about the amazing Donald Gray who went to the mobile Vietnam Memorial when it came to Cave City, Kentucky. Gray told his story to the journalist, Gina Kinslow, from the Glasgow Daily Times;

Gray was a sniper in Vietnam and said it is past time to pay tribute to those who made the ultimate sacrifice during the Vietnam War.

[…]

“It’s a miracle that I’m not worse than I am, because I was right in the middle of Agent Orange and Agent White and all that stuff that they sprayed,” he said. “They done it the heaviest around Saigon. My home post was 40 miles north of Saigon, but I spent most of my time all up and down and through Vietnam. If they sent me out for a guy, I had to go and get him.”

[…]

Gray said he was never one to talk much about his military service.

“I never let no one but the immediate family know that I had even served three years in the Army and six months in Vietnam until 1991 when the National Guard was sent to Kuwait,” he said.

[…]

Gray was also a prisoner of war while serving in Vietnam.

“I spent roughly eight hours as a prisoner,” he said. “I got loose. I would have gotten loose if I had to chew the ropes in two. I was determined.”

He explained he had met a girl while on leave and had popped the question. She said yes, but the couple decided not to marry until he returned home.

“That gave me high esteem to get back home,” he said. “I would have walked over anybody to get back.”

He fought five of his captors and managed to get the pilot, copilot and a door gunner free. They made it back to the helicopter where they had been shot down and then called for help.

Well, Gray was indeed in the Army from 1966-1969. He was in Vietnam from May 1969-October 1969. He was assigned to the 229th Service and Repair company as a power train repairman. He went to Vietnam from an assignment in Germany. He wasn’t a sniper, he didn’t have to retrieve downed airmen. He wasn’t a POW according to DPAA;

He wasn’t on active duty during the Gulf War;

Donald Gray’s only military records;

I guess it wasn’t good enough that he’d served when many Americans of his generation wouldn’t.

Our friends at Stolen Valor-Canada send us their work on yet another of their countrymen posing as US Vietnam War heroes. Judging Robert White by the company he keeps, here he is with fellow phony, the late James Wellheiser.

He wore the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star along with some flight wings. When confronted in social media about the finery, he responded that he was wearing the medals to honor friends, never thinking that anyone would think that he was claiming to have been awarded them;

I don’t know where these guys get the idea that excuse holds water.

He may have been in the Navy during Vietnam, a FOIA will tell us that;

To summarize;

Our partners at Military Phonies send us thier work on this Anthony Spositi fellow who thinks that it’s perfectly legitimate to wear his MARPATs to his wedding. Well as if you can’t guess, the Marine Corps responds to a FOIA request with “Who?”