Category: Shitbags

Glen sends us a link from Syracuse where a Vietnam veteran, Michael Haven, was sentenced to five years of probation for stealing almost $17,000 from the Vietnam Veterans of America Central New York Chapter 103, in Liverpool;

The Vietnam veteran was arrested on a grand larceny charge in September 2012 by state police.

Haven’s plea called for him to admit to a lesser grand larceny charge, in exchange for five years of probation and a promise that he repay the group.

Haven will pay what he can over the course of his probation, and the VVA’s insurance covered some of the loss, Van Doren said.

Haven pleaded guilty last Spring.

A bunch of you folks have been sending us a link to an article about Gabriel James Brown who is facing trial in Florida for a series of armed robberies. His claim is that he was a former Special Forces soldier and he was driven by the adrenaline and he needed to rob stuff to recreate the thrill of being a special forces soldier. From Stars & Stripes;

A former Special Forces Green Beret, Brown won a Bronze Star for “exceptionally meritorious service” as a weapons sergeant in Afghanistan.

He saw friends killed in combat; he killed others, at least once under orders, he says, when he wasn’t so sure the man posed a threat. He saw civilians, including children, maimed and killed.

He says he still has nightmares about what happened.

When he left the military, Brown went to work for the contractor Blackwater, guarding CIA personnel in Afghanistan, where he again was in danger and fighting against threats seen and unseen.

He became, he says, an adrenaline junkie.

All of that may be true, but according to our friends at Professional Soldiers, Brown was indeed Special Forces qualified, but, they pulled his tab in 2004. It seems to indicate that he was a problem child while he wore a uniform.

I’ve ever seen a Bronze Star Medal for “exceptionally meritorious service”, they’re awarded for either valor (with a “V” device) or meritorious service. Period. I didn’t “win” mine, I earned it – well, my commander thought I did, anyway.

And if he really needed a adrenaline fix, last I checked, there’s still a war going on. He could have gone back, unless there was an administrative reason he couldn’t. Thousands of veterans who did the job he did don’t rob banks every day.

Some of you may remember the coverage we’ve been doing on Kevin Shakely, the little weasel-dick who went AWOL 7 years ago and now claimed to local media that he’d been discharged, although the Army disagrees. Well, apparently some in the media see it our way. A reporter emailed to tell us that Shakely’s court martial has been delayed for a month…get this…because he needs dental work.

Yes, he’s been AWOL for seven years, but now, suddenly, he needs to take care of his rotting choppers. He screwed the taxpayers out of any honorable service, now he’s going to screw them for some fillings (I’m guessing, I don’t what he needs, but it’s supposed to delay the court martial a month).

There’s plenty of time for him to get his teeth fixed in Leavenworth, I hear they have a fine prison dentist there. I guess he wants a perfect smile for that first impression he makes on his new roomie.

WTOP reports that Adam Kokesh was sentenced today for his little “I can load a shotgun in downtown DC”, “Oh, no you can’t” theater. It looks like he got “time served”, some probation time and he has to register as a “Gun Offender” whatever that means.

In November, he pleaded guilty to three weapons charges: carrying a rifle or shotgun; an unregistered firearm and unlawful possession of ammunition.

He also admitted to a marijuana possession charge linked to smoking the substance near the White House in June.

The rifle possession charge carried a penalty of up to five years in prison. The other firearm charges each carried the potential of up to one year, with potential fines.

The drug charge carried up to 180 days behind bars and a fine.

I’m just glad that he finally spent some time in the hoosegow, finally, if not for the gun charge, then at least for all of the other shit he’s been getting away with since 2007. Thanks to TSO and Brown Neck Gaiter for the tip. While I think that he shouldn’t have been arrested for having a loaded gun in our nation’s capitol, it is illegal there and he was just doing it to get attention – that seemed to work for him.

We wrote about Kevin Shakley back in August when he told local reporters at the News Tribune that the Army kept pestering him about the discharge that he said they didn’t mail to him after they told him to go home. Well, he was apprehended once again and the reporters got interested in the story again and figured out that Young Shakley is FOS.

When Army police started raising pressure on him in August, Shakely, 28, contacted Sacramento’s KTXL Fox 40 News and claimed he was an honorably discharged Iraq and Afghanistan veteran being harassed by the Army.

“This is not how you treat somebody that went through what I had to go through and made the sacrifices I had to make,” he told KTXL.

Shakely in fact spent less than six months in uniform before deserting. Army records show he completed his initial training and spent just six days at his first duty station – Fort Lewis, before its reorganization as Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

He’s in custody at Lewis-McChord awaiting a Jan. 22 court-martial. He is in the Army jail because he’s considered a flight risk, base spokesman Joe Piek said.

The Army filed eight criminal charges against him. Three are for his alleged desertion; four stemmed from the lies he’s accused of telling the television station.

They called last week and asked for my two cents;

“I’m glad they caught him, and I’m glad he’s facing all these charges,” said John Lilyea of West Virginia, a retired Army noncommissioned officer who runs This Ain’t Hell.

Yeah, I guess that’s all they could use in the half-hour interview I did with the reporter. He told me that the reporter who did the initial report on Shakley had reservations about his claims, but ran with the story any way. He couldn’t tell me why.
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You all know the story that “Scruff Face” Jimmy Janos was knocked out by Chris Kyle in brief bar fight when Janos made the comment that Michael Mansoor probably deserved to die during Mansoor’s wake. Janos was mentioned in Chris Kyle’s book “American Sniper” which caused has-been Ventura to file a lawsuit against Kyle. When Kyle was murdered, Janos decided to sue his estate, and by extension, Kyle’s wife, Taya. Well, according to the Star-Tribune, two sisters have come forward and their version contradicts Ventura’s version of the event – that Ventura never made the comment, nor that he was KtFO.

Two sisters attending the 2006 wake of a Navy SEAL offered sworn statements filed Wednesday that could undermine former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura’s claim that he was defamed in a popular book by another former Navy SEAL.

The sisters allege that one of them saw an unidentified man in a San Diego bar punch Ventura, and one sister said Ventura stated that the Navy SEAL “probably” deserved to die.

Oh-oh. At the link, there’s also a picture of the sisters with Ventura at the bar before the incident, so I guess the fact that they were there when it happened isn’t in dispute.

Yep, the EPA employee who told his employers that he was a CIA agent and got away with it, some years not even showing up for work and ripping off the taxpayers of nearly $1 million, got 32 months in prison for more than a decade of malfeasance according to the Washington Post;

U.S. District Judge Ellen S. Huvelle said Beale’s deception had “made a mockery of working for the federal government.”

Beale, 65, admitted in September that he had skipped out on work for years by telling a series of supervisors, including top officials in EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, that he was doing top-secret work for the CIA. He was paid for a total of 2 ½ years of work he did not perform since early 2000 and received about $500,000 in bonuses he did not deserve, according to his plea agreement.

Assistant U.S. Attorney James E. Smith said Beale ripped off the government in “notorious, historic fashion” and had become the poster child for problems with the federal government workforce.

He lied about contracting malaria to obtain a reserved parking space that cost the EPA $8,000 over three years. He took trips to visit his family in Los Angeles for which he charged the government more than $57,000.

32 months? Seriously? But, he has to pay the money back, if he lives that long.

Blue Falcon, Kimberly Rivera, the baby machine who went to Canada while on her mid-tour leave from Iraq leaving a trail of babies every where she went, is finally out of jail after serving 7 1/2 months of her ten month sentence. Her lawyer, the equally portly James Branum, trampled several people getting to the microphone after her release. From Military.com;

Kimberly Rivera and her husband, Mario Rivera, will now focus on “rebuilding their lives,” likely with extended family in Texas. Where the family eventually ends up will depend on “wherever they can find a job and cheap rent,” Branum said.

Mario Rivera will likely look for work, and Kimberly Rivera will likely stay at home with the couple’s children. Eventually Kimberly Rivera may seek work or return to school, but for now, “she has a newborn that’s going to be at the focus,” Branum said.

Her bad conduct discharge will likely pose less of a problem when it comes to finding future employment than most would think, Branum said.

“It would keep her from rejoining the military, and law enforcement is picky,” he said. “But most employers don’t care what the discharge is, but why. It’s not as much of a black mark as people think it is.”

The bad conduct discharge “effectively functions as a federal misdemeanor,” Branum added.

Branum, who has been very effective at getting 100% of his clients locked up, is also wrong about how employers view deserters. In this economic environment, I’m sure no one would hire a deserter before they’d hire someone who is reasonably dependable. I’m pretty sure Texas is a bad choice for the family – there are cattle guards everywhere that may confound the obese couple when they’re trying to get to work.

Thanks to Chief Tango for the link.