{"id":167869,"date":"2025-03-25T10:15:28","date_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:15:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=167869"},"modified":"2025-03-25T10:22:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-25T14:22:13","slug":"medal-of-honor-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=167869","title":{"rendered":"Medal of Honor Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An article published on March 11, 2025, by Stephen Ruiz on military.com, examines a significant stolen valor case involving H.L.I. Lordship Industries, a federal contractor that illegally sold 300 fraudulent Medals of Honor in the early 1990s.<\/div>\n
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Federal Judge William Bassler, incensed by veterans\u2019 outrage, imposed an $80,000 fine\u2014the maximum penalty\u2014along with $22,500 in restitution and five years\u2019 probation on Lordship after its guilty plea in 1996. The company, which produced 60% of U.S. military medals, faced further repercussions when the Pentagon severed ties, barring it from government contracts for 15 years, costing an estimated $155 million.<\/div>\n
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The FBI uncovered the scam in 1995 after agents posing as collectors purchased fake medals traced back to Lordship. The article highlights the broader issue of stolen valor, noting increased penalties in 1994 and the Stolen Valor Acts of 2005 and 2013, while illustrating ongoing challenges with a case of an Illinois judge, Michael O\u2019Brien, exposed as a fraud after falsely claiming Medal of Honor status. The narrative underscores these type of deceptions’ emotional and legal toll on genuine veterans and the military community.<\/div>\n
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The Medal of Honor Fraud Case that Took Stolen Valor to the Extreme<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

military.com | By Stephen Ruiz | Published March 11, 2025<\/p>\n

With each letter from a disgusted veteran, William Bassler grew more furious.
\nThen a federal district court judge in New Jersey, Bassler listened intently as those veterans described how a federal government contractor that sold 300 fraudulent Medals of Honor in the early 1990s had degraded their military service in an egregious example of stolen valor. When Bassler sentenced the defendants, he did not hold back.<\/p>\n

“True Medal of Honor recipients and their families have the right to be outraged …,” Bassler said, according to a New York Times article. “My only regret is that I’m limited by the guidelines.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An article published on March 11, 2025, by Stephen Ruiz on military.com, examines a significant stolen … Medal of Honor Fraud<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":167872,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[717,719,718,408,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-167869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cmoh","category-congressional-medal-of-honor","category-medal-of-honor-2","category-stolen-valor","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/663"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=167869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":167873,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167869\/revisions\/167873"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/167872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=167869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=167869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=167869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}