Category: Stolen Valor Act

KFOX14 reports that New Mexico’s Governor Susana Martinez signed a new Stolen Valor Act that will take effect July 1st.

Gov. Susana Martinez signed the House bill last week, making it a misdemeanor to make false claims of military service for personal gain.

In New Mexico, a misdemeanor is punishable by a fine up to $1,000, up to a year in jail, or both.

Folks we spoke with were mixed on the law.

Some were supportive of the new legislation.

“It’s a great first step, but I think it should be a harsher penalty than just a misdemeanor,” said Adame.

While others did not believe stolen valor should be punishable.

“I’m kind of caught in the middle,” said Sunland Park resident Sonny Cenicros. “I don’t think it should go as far as a misdemeanor.”

The new law isn’t as tough as it is across the border in Texas;

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott signed a bill in 2015 creating harsher punishments for stolen valor, making it a class B misdemeanor.

It carries a fine up to $2,000 and up to 180 days in jail.

The Times Free Press talks to Mary Schantag of the POW Network on the subject of the rarity of prosecutions of stolen valor cases;

Schantag said she has seen close to 100 cases in which false information got into military records, whether through self-editing, intimidation of a clerk who handled documents or other means.

“Unless there are orders for this someplace, unless [the claimant] has witnesses, it’s still questionable,” she said.

Violation of the Stolen Valor Act is punishable by a fine and up to a year in prison. The problem is finding a federal agency with the resources and staffing to devote to the cases, Schantag said.

“They’re not going to drop their work on terrorism because we’ve got a guy claiming eight Purple Hearts,” Schantag said. “It’s common sense. That’s reality. But the state level may have the ability to pick that up. It’s a federal crime in most instances, falsifying military records but it pales in comparison to the level of other crimes going on that the FBI has to go after.”

Several states have stolen valor laws on the books, including Alabama, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to news reports.

Schantag’s voice began to break when she described her passion for the issue.

“It is to make sure our military history and the lives lost to fight for freedom, to make sure those things are accurately told,” she said. “These liars are changing military history and if you think about it, 50 to 100 years from now, who’s going to be able to figure out the truth or a lie?”

Stolen valor takes away from those who spilled blood and, in some cases, lost their lives, she said.

The Times Free Press became interested in the issue when they published the story of Steven Holloway the self-proclaimed “most-decorated veteran of the Vietnam War”. It looks like he “salted” his records before he left the military, in other words, somehow he altered his records so that the supply clerk in a Transportation unit, became an often-wounded hero who landed a helicopter when the pilot was killed. We’ve seen that happen often, but we’ve only seen one guy prosecuted, and ultimately convicted for altering his records. Robert Brooks was sentenced to five years probation in Davenport, Iowa.

I know the FBI is investigating at least one other, having talked to the investigator recently, but, yeah, those investigations are rare. The states have been much more successful prosecuting valor thieves, like New Jersey’s prosecution of Robert Guidi, and Georgia’s prosecution of Shane Ladner last year.

Some doofus named Alex Nichols decided to take on the stolen valor community and the entire notion of stolen valor in his column last week entitled “The absurd conservative obsession with “stolen valor”“.

Somehow, he claims that the Stolen Valor community is strictly a conservative construct. You know, despite the fact that Doug Sterner and his wife, Pamela, who wrote the Stolen Valor Act, Colorado Congressman John Salazar, who introduced the Act in Congress and President Barack Obama, who signed the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 into law, are not Conservatives or Republicans.

Nichols also makes the absurd contention that “The Wedding Crashers” influenced the Stolen Valor Act passage – Ms. Sterner had been working on the subject long before the movie came out – ten years after BG Burkett’s book was published.

For some reason, Nichols doesn’t bother to look at the true giant of stolen valor websites, that being TAH with 240 new valor thieves listed in 2017, instead he wants to talk about the YouTube videos of bullies confronting homeless people wearing thrift-store clothing and Guardian of Valor which has had only a handful of stolen valor busts this year – although they sell their own brand of coffee and have their logo on a NASCAR vehicle.

This Ain’t Hell has prided itself on busting valor thieves irrespective of their political persuasions. Most of our thieves this year display pro-Trump memes on their Facebook pages. We stopped one valor stealing speaker from addressing the RNC a year ago last summer. The Washington Post and New York Times loved our exposures of the phonies at the Malheur Stolen Valor Convention.

Although we are conservative, mostly, when we discuss political issues, that has never leaked into the stolen valor aspect of our news. Maybe that’s why Nichols didn’t bother to name us or talk to us before he posted his stupid, uneducated opinion. Our stolen valor creds go back eleven years, longer than any other existing website today. But we don’t sell coffee, and that’s my failing.

The internet provided a perfect medium for the public shaming of valor thieves. 2011 saw the transformation of Stolenvalor.com, originally a single-page advertisement for Burkett’s book, into a hub for self-appointed private investigators. The revamped website featured an “investigative team” of pissed-off-looking retired soldiers and a section for “secured targets” — meaning valor thieves (by now, several dozen) caught in the act. Through crowdsourced tips and military records requests, stolen valor detectives engage in a rather heavy-handed simulation of military life.

Yeah, TAH features over a thousand “secured targets” – many of whom are currently occupying a jail cell for their fraud, and many more are awaiting their moment of justice. Their crimes separated well-intentioned Americans (and others) from their hard-earned money. One is doing 20 years in a Florida prison for raping an underage girl using his military lies to meet her, there’s another perv occupying a New Jersey cell for the same crime. If that’s the kind of people who are targeted by us “vigilantes”, do you really want to shit on us, Al?

Chris Otero writes an article in the Havok Journal entitled “Blue On Blue: Stolen Valor Fratricide” in which he tries to make the case that stolen valor enforcement is not a worthwhile endeavor.

My encounter ended well for me but it didn’t end so well for Marine veteran Michael Deflin. This Fallujah vet couldn’t produce an active duty CAC card on request from some Air Force dude and therefore he got the crap kicked out of him. He suffered a broken leg and jaw in the process. Prior to him and his friend beating Deflin down, the USAF guy accused him of ‘Stolen Valor’.

Congratulations, we have now started conducting fratricide on our own.

[…]

Part of what makes this so laughable is that some of the loudest members of the mob are people who were FOB warriors downrange. They are the dudes you see at the PX or the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport wearing their absolutely pristine condition 400 dollar tactical packs with the ‘Major League Infidel’ patch, the always ridiculous camo cap with a subdued American flag on the velcro, and drinking a giant Monster while telling everyone who will listen about that ‘one time in Iraq, I did xxxxxx and I’m totally not making it up!’

The truth is they never left the wire on their one OIF/OEF tour – but I sure as hell hear them lying…oops, I mean exaggerating about what they have done downrange in the orderly rooms, at the PX food court, on social media, and in the customs line at Ali al Salim Air Base. Come on, guys, you don’t think we notice? You don’t think we haven’t heard multiple variations of the same story our entire career?

For many of you out there in the mob, I would say check your own shot group before you starting calling out others.

I don’t know who he’s talking about. I don’t know anyone in our community that fits that description. While I sympathize with Michael Deflin, no one I associate with confronts valor thieves in such a way.

There was a time when mine was the only blog on the social media conducting stolen valor investigations, and it was a more gentlemanly endeavor.

In fact, I can name a few dozen people who we’ve busted who are cooling their heels in prison, some with sentences measured in decades, because of our efforts and research, as well as our law enforcement contacts. We’re more responsible than most of the stolen valor vigilantes who troll airports and coffee shops on the lookout for someone trying to scam a free scone.

I don’t normally wear pins or badges in public, but if I do, I have a DD214 on my phone to show doubters. My records are posted for the whole world to see on the internet. I have been “outside the wire” on occasion. I’ve lost friends to enemy fire. Many of the people with whom I associate fit that description.

So, choke down on your shot group, Mr Otero.