Category: Phony soldiers

Our friends at Military Phony send us their work on this fellow, Richard Dale Arlington, an author of a self-help book and a motivational speaker;

Arlington claims to be a Sergeant of Marines and a Silver Star Medal recipient, presumably from Beirut or Grenada the only two instances of the application of Marine Corps force during his service.

The National Personnel Records Center disagrees with his version of events. They say that Dick was a Corporal when he got out of the Marines in 1987 and there are no valor medals in his records, not unusual for a fellow who fixes airplanes and has little chance to be valorous. I see he does have the Basic Nutrition Course which indicates that there may have been some violent encounters when someone got between Dick and the chowline. It ain’t easy maintaining that distinctive potato shape;

Someone sent us their work that they did on this fellow, Braxton Lee Anderson III five years ago. As you can see, he claims that he has four awards of the Combat Infantryman Badge, he claims that he was in Just Cause, Desert Storm and twice in Afghanistan and that he was airborne qualified;

There is no such thing as a 4th award of the CIB. Even if he’d been in Panama, Desert Storm and Afganistan, it would only be a second award of the badge. Panama and Desert Storm were both part of the Vietnam Era of the CIB. The only 3rd award of the CIB was for WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Period. But it doesn’t matter, during Just Cause, he was in Korea Germany and during Desert Storm and the GWOT, he was in Fort Livingroom.

He was busted 5 years ago, but claims that these are his father’s records because it says Braxton Lee Anderson II. Yeah, well, the NPRC is bad at tiny details, but these are your records, Brax. You bragged that you were in Panama, so your father had the same six years of service as you had?

A perfectly honorable career – he even earned the Expert Infantryman Badge – a remarkable feat – but then he had to crap all over it. And, by the way, he didn’t go to jump school, but he earned an Air Assault Badge – another remarkable feat that he crapped all over;

Someone sent us a link to the Tennessean which reported about Vietnam Veteran John Lawson Griffith. He told them the story about how his helicopter had been shot down and he’d been captured. Well, here, let him tell it;

His UH-1 “Huey” helicopter had crashed in the dense jungle, killing three people whose identities he has never known. The less you know, the less you can tell the enemy if you’re captured.

And that’s exactly what happened not long after the crash.

Griffith remembers being led by a rope tied around his neck, his hands secured tightly behind his back. He and another soldier captured with him marched like this for 19 hours through thick foliage.

Knowing he faced torture, death or both, he waited for his captor to make a misstep — mapping out a plan of attack in his mind.

Finally, his North Vietnamese captor stumbled. He hit the ground, dragging Griffith and the other soldier nearly on top of him.

Griffith, his hands still tied, immediately pounced, tearing into the enemy’s neck with his teeth.

“I gauged where his carotid artery would be, and I knew that since I didn’t have a weapon, that’s what I needed to do,” he says.

Griffith and the other soldier were recovered a short time later, their captor left to bleed to death on the jungle floor.

He says he killed dozens of other enemy combatants, mostly by slitting their throats.

It’s something he’s neither proud nor ashamed of.

“I did it because I’m a survivor,” he said. “Had I not done it, other people would have died. Not only me, but maybe this squad or platoon that was coming in.”

Checking with the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), I don’t see Griffith’s name among the Marine Corps POW/MIAs;

Looking at his records, John was a Marine, and he was indeed in Vietnam from October 1967 – October 1968. In the article, he says that he was assigned to a recon unit in the 1st Marine Division, but his records say that he was assigned to the Headquarters and Service Company of 1st Battalion of the 1st Marine Division. I don’t see any Recon training, either. I see some Nuclear, Biological and Chemical training that makes me think he was the NBC/CBR guy at the Battalion Headquarters.

In the picture above, he’s wearing a Bronze Star Medal with a Valor device, three Purple Heart Medals, and a POW Medal. I’ll grant him that he left the service more than a decade before the POW Medal existed, so it wouldn’t be in his records unless he’d filed a DD215 correction to his discharge, however there’s nothing in his records that would support his POW claims. His records credit him with one Purple Heart (not the three he’s wearing) and there is no Bronze Star in his file (with or without a Valor device). I also don’t see the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal in his records, but there it is on his uniform. Everybody wants to wear jump wings, but no one wants to jump from airplanes.

Griffith has plenty to be proud of in his records, I don’t know why he felt that he needed to add anything to it. I was going to hold off on this one until after the weekend, but the more I looked at it, the more it pissed me off. So, here you go.

The good folks at Military Phony send us their work on this Daniel Matthews fellow who put his DD214 on his motorcycle sidecar;

He told his story to a local journalist once, too;

Matthews, who splits time between Pembroke and Phoenix, was a sniper, an elite sniper. He served in the Marine Corps on a “recluse” mission.

A young man named XXX was assigned as his spotter.

On XXX third outing with Matthews, they were on a mission and XXX was working hard to do a good job. At one point, Matthews told him he needed to get his head down. He kept spotting. He didn’t move fast enough.

“I inhaled bits of his brain,” Matthews said.

He then added, “but I killed the other sniper.”

Two days later, on another mission, he killed an enemy three-star general.

But to this day, Matthews said, he still struggles with the memories of his time in Southeast Asia.

When I showed him the picture I took of him touching Peter’s name, he said, “I can never touch the real Wall.”

Conversations with him are useless, because he has a “bunch of DD214s, but they get updated as time goes on” because he thinks he still goes out on secret missions, or “black ops”.

Yeah, well, he was in the Marines from 1971 – 1975. He was a motor vehicle operator and never left the continental United States;

Then he joined the National Guard for 15 years;

He was a 68M, which looks like it was an Aircraft Weapons System repairman in the 1980s (it became a Nutritional Care Specialist recently). For some reason in his final days, they made him a cook in an aviation unit for a brief period, for whatever reason. But not a sniper and no deployments. His DD214 on his sidecar covers every place someone fired shots in anger during his career – but he wasn’t in any of those places.

He does have two National Defense Service Medals, though, so he might be legit.

More than a year ago, we first wrote about Gregory Allen who pretended to be a wounded Marine in Marin County, California when he was busted by our buddy, Dan Noyes at KGO ABC7. Dan reports that, after pleading not guilty last year, Allen changed his plea to guilty yesterday in exchange for a sentence of three years probation.

or 10 years, Greg Allen had so many people fooled that he was a drill instructor, a special forces Marine, a sniper with two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star. On Thursday, he finally admitted in court that he lied.

The 69-year-old did not comment as he left court after pleading guilty to the stolen valor charge. But his attorney told the I-Team’s Dan Noyes that Allen is sorry for misleading so many people.

“And I think they have every right to be very upset,” said Charles Dresow. “And I think Greg feels very badly about that and understands completely why people are upset with him, why people will never talk to him again.”

Allen admitted in court to using a phony Purple Heart to raise $23,000 from people who thought they were giving to a war hero. Allen helped run Marin County veterans groups and owned a San Rafael gym called the “House of Steel”, for anyone from soccer moms to young men interested in the military.

Allen had never served in the Marine Corps, but he had been in the Navy for less than a year.

Dan Noyes’ son, on the other hand, joined the Marine Corps last year and just left on his first permanent assignment after his initial training.

The Panama City News Herald tells the story of Robert “Bob” Leroy Rogers who told an elderly neighbor and Air Force veteran that he had been incorrectly listed as deceased from his time in communist POW camps in Vitnam and how he’d used that status to fight against drug lords in Central America, because only dead people can fight drug lords, I guess.

Anyway, because he was legally dead, the government couldn’t pay him until the issue was cleared up. So Rogers convinced his elderly neighbor to pay his property taxes – I guess if you’re dead, that doesn’t exempt you from taxes.

Eventually, Lipovsky became suspicious that although Rogers couldn’t seem to get his money from the military, he was receiving disability. Later, police reported, some people who knew Rogers in New Hampshire contacted Lipovsky to alert him he might be getting duped.

When officers asked Rogers about the borrowed money, they said he admitted to being misleading and said although he he was enlisted in the military, he was never deployed.

All-in-all, Rogers took Lipovsky for more than $18,000 – but, you know, stolen valor is a victimless crime.

Earlier this month, we wrote about Joyell “JD” Riley who falsely claimed to be a “highly decorated combat veteran” female Marine and that she suffered from cancer and defrauded folks through her GoFundMe tin cup. After she was arrested for the fraud, she admitted that she had never served in the military.

One of our Facebook friends tells us that she was arrested again this week for more of the same;

“On Oct. 22, 2015, Mrs. Barbara Walter approached Miss Riley and asked her some questions about Mission Possible,” the restraining order states.

After learning about Riley’s organization, Mission Possible, Walter made two donations in October and November amounting to $10,400. The checks were deposited to an account belonging to Riley at Directions Credit Union.

In December, Walter still had not received a receipt. She sent four Facebook messages from Dec. 3, 2015 to Feb. 22, 2016.

“The money was supposed to go to her nonprofit organization for a house to shelter veterans. She said that ($10,400) would get the house ready. My husband’s a veteran,” Walter said Wednesday.

Walter received an email on Feb. 24, 2016 with a receipt, indicating an Employer ID Number for Mission Possible and Special Visits Ministry.

Both EINs were searched by the Richland County Prosecutor’s Office on the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Registration website and GuideStar — both searches did not return favorable results.

These folks who lie about their military service ALWAYS have something else criminal going on – prosecutors who ignore these cases do so at their own peril. A jury trial for Riley is scheduled for August 29th.

The folks at Military Phony sent us their work on this Raul Medina fellow. He thinks that he was in Vietnam and that he was a Master Sergeant and a Ranger. He loves taking pictures of himself in his finery;

I’m not sure if that’s an Air Assault badge or a Glider badge that he’s wearing incorrectly with his jump wings, but it really doesn’t matter – he didn’t earn either. He joined the Army in August, 1973, the same month that last combat troops left Vietnam and he did three years, at the rank of Private First Class (E-3). He was a Hawk Air Defense missile crewman in Fort Bliss, Texas the whole time.

And he needed a haircut;