Category: Phony soldiers

Someone sent us their work on this John Lam fellow in Silver Spring, Maryland. Folks tell us that we won’t find any record of his service because of his “secret missions”. In fact he’s so secret squirrel that his uniform is stored in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at Quantico so he can attend funeral services at Arlington. But he’s not so secret that he can’t wear a SEAL ballcap or put a Trident on his car;

He also claims two deployments to Vietnam in conversations.

Well, he was right – the National Personnel Center couldn’t find his records;

Don Shipley assures us that Lam is not a SEAL, although he probably hasn’t looked in that SCIF at Quantico.

Almost three years ago we wrote about David DeMulle, a fellow posing as a Vietnam veteran in Sunland-Tujunga, California. He self-published a local newspaper called “The Foothills Paper” in which he spread tales of his derring-do.

It seems that in 2015, he solicited his readers to sell him their firearms which he claimed that he would resell and use the money to get aid to Haiti earthquake victims. DeMulle claimed that he had a federal firearms license so the transactions would be legal. Yeah, no, he is a felon prohibited from handling a firearm.

According to the LA Daily News, two law enforcement officers saw his ad for the proposed aid, so they sold him two weapons and then got a warrant to search his home where they found twenty-three other guns and over a thousand POUNDS of ammunition.

DeMulle bought the ammunition from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department;

The court filings also allege that in 2002 DeMulle purchased thousands of rounds of surplus small-arms ammunition from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He won a bid through his company, the Organization for Strategic Studies, and the ammunition was sold to him.

Federal prosecutors said after an investigation, it was found that there was no evidence a background check was done and that the Sheriff’s Department “mistakenly” handed over ammunition to DeMulle.

Well, the upshot is that DeMulle, the 75-year-old valor thief, was sentenced to 41 months in prison for being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition last month, after pleading guilty late last year. Because stolen valor is just a symptom of wider criminal behavior;

The LA Times asked him for a comment;

“What do you want to know other than I was railroaded by a biased judge and a corrupt” prosecutor, DeMulle wrote in response to an email seeking comment.

Our partners at Military Phonies send us their work on this Richard Patey fellow who, of course, claims to be a US Navy SEAL.

On his LinkedIn profile, he claims to have served for more than 23 years in the Navy;

Of course, the Navy doesn’t remember his career like that;

He had a little over three years, he served on the USS SARATOGA as an Airman, Aviation Ordnanceman Striker (AOAN), an E-3. But, no SEAL training. Surprised? Yeah, me neither.

As many of you know, I was pretty sick earlier this year. Robert Stanley McCormick took advantage of that and launched a campaign against my inbox with several of his friends. They flooded my email with physical and legal threats to the point that I had little time or strength for anything else. So I just took the post about him down – a post that had stood for nearly three years.

This weekend, he launched a similar campaign against our partners using the fact that I removed his post as proof that he was indeed a special forces qualified soldier.

Honestly, I’d just forgot about the whole thing – McCormick should have done the same, but he didn’t, so I restored his post last night.

Reprinted for your entertainment;

Scotty sends us his work on Robert Stanley “Bo” McCormick. Green Beret Posers Exposed, Guardians of Valor and Professional Soldiers are supposed to be working on posts abut him, too. But as you can see in the picture above, he’s claiming to be a Special Forces-qualified veteran by wearing the full 10th SF Group (Germany) flash on his beret and by the Special Forces Qualification Tab on his vest. He’s also wearing a Diver Badge and jump wings. Well, some of that is true;

He graduated from jump school and went to Special Forces Training from August – November of 1966 as an Engineer, but he didn’t graduate and he went to 10th Special Forces Group in Germany (although it looks like there’s a error on the 2-1 that says he went to 1st SFG – but the 10th was at Bad Tolz, FRG, US Army Europe (USEUR) There is a picture on his Facebook page that shows him wearing a school flash on his beret). If I’m not mistaken, in those olden times, he would have worn a “candy stripe” on his beret, not a full flash, signifying that he was assigned to an SF unit, but not SF qualified.

Although his records indicate that he graduated from jump school, he didn’t attend or graduate from the Army combat divers course. Also his records indicate that he was assigned to 10th SFG as a unit armorer and supply sergeant.

I guess he was founder of the Special Forces Motorcycle Club and they could find nothing that supported his claims of being SF qualified. “Bo” told them that, even though he failed the course, Colonel Beck (Beckwith?) “awarded” him the qualifier and being a supply clerk in the 10th Group in Germany made him SF qualified. So they booted his ass.

You should really let sleeping dogs lie.

Last year we wrote about Eric Nelson, a member of the Aurora, Colorado school board who pretended to be an Air Force officer during his campaign for office. His actual service in the Air Force was April – June 1998…he spent more time at MEPS than he spent on active duty.

In addition to his false military claims were demonstrably false academic claims.

You might be surprised to learn that, not only is he still in that office, he’s now planning to run for reelection. The Aurora Sentinel interviews him;

During an interview with The Aurora Sentinel this week about a re-election campaign for the November APS school board race, Nelson said the controversy surrounding his resume was a result of machinations by political opponents. Nelson was running for the Democratic nomination in House District 42 last year when revelations about his falsified resume came to light.

“My information has been public record. This was an attack, a political smearing by political opponents,” Nelson said. “The (APS) board members always knew what my background was.”

I guess his political opponents dressed him up in that costume above, took his picture and posted it on his campaign website. Crafty bunch that they are.

The APS board had directed Munn to remove Nelson’s information from the website on Aug. 2 during a school board meeting. After Nelson’s embellished resume came to light, he refused repeated calls from the board last year for him to resign. As a result of his refusal to step down, the board stripped Nelson of his position as Secretary of the Board and his ability to pay for expenses related to his work on the board with a district credit card. It also officially censured him on Aug. 16, with only Board Director Barbara Yamrick voting with Nelson against the move.

School board officials have pointed out that they cannot remove Nelson from the APS board because he’s an elected official. Only voters can remove Nelson, and no recall campaign was ever begun.

Yeah, well, I have no faith in the voters to remove him, but I guess we’ll see.

Our partners at Green Beret Posers Exposed share their work with us on their latest – David Huggins. He allowed his alligator mouth to overload his hummingbird ass when he challenged the folks over there to get his military records at their own peril.

A look at his Facebook account showed all manners of special warfare claims, complete with fuzzy photos that were supposed to be Dave.

Well, challenge accepted, Dave;

He was a leg medic stationed in Hawaii. He never attended jump school, never trained at Camp Mackall, he had three years of active duty, so he never made it to Iraq like he claims. He probably never experienced a tough day in the Army after basic training. So here is GBPP’s 17 minute video of David’s claims;

Gunnery Sergeant Perry “PJ” James was listed on the old POW Network website before it closed down. Here’s his entry;

He claimed that he was a POW of the Viet Cong for a brief period before he escaped. As Hondo explained, only 32 American military personnel were captured and escaped from the enemy. Perry James was not one of them.

On April 26, 2010, the National Japanese American Memorial Foundation presented their annual Award for Patriotism to the Navajo Code Talkers Association and they introduced Gunnery Sergeant Perry James with the group for some reason as a POW/MIA of the Vietnam War. You can hear his introduction at about 12:30 in the video at this link. The speaker also says that James earned the POW Medal.

As I said, he was not on the DPAA list as an escaped POW/MIA Marine, nor is he listed on the “accounted for” POWs at DPAA;

According to his records, he did earn much of what he’s wearing;

There’s no mention of any time he was missing in action while he was assigned to Headquarters and Service Company of the 13th Maintenance Battalion of the 5th Marine Division as a 2531 Voice Radio Operator while he was in Vietnam. His records are quite explicit about his participation in combat operations while assigned to a Headquarters company of a maintenance battalion. It’s possible, I suppose.

One thing jumped out at me – in November and December 1979, he supposedly attended the Basic Airborne Course at Fort Benning, Georgia and he completed the three week course in ten days – that would have been seven actual days of training instead of the normal fifteen work days. His training lists “Airborne”, but his awards list doesn’t say anything about parachutist wings or an assignment to a unit where airborne training would be a prerequisite. There’s also no mention of dive training. So to me, that throws all of his records into question, but nothing I can prove.

I do know, however, that he wasn’t a POW nor was he ever Missing In Action.