{"id":21858,"date":"2011-01-13T10:38:45","date_gmt":"2011-01-13T14:38:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=21858"},"modified":"2011-01-14T08:56:37","modified_gmt":"2011-01-14T12:56:37","slug":"phony-vet-busted-while-panhandling-at-walmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=21858","title":{"rendered":"Phony vet busted while panhandling at WalMart (UPDATED w\/DD214)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The local American Legion and VFW in Wake Forest and Raleigh, North Carolina busted a panhandler who was pretending to be a decorated veteran<\/a>;<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Wake Forest police say Skellion posed as a veteran from October 2008 to February 2010 and cheated the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars out of more than $1,500.<\/p>\n

Frank Stancil, department adjutant with the American Legion in Raleigh, said officials found out that Skellion was asking for money while dressed a soldier in front of a Wake Forest Walmart.<\/p>\n

They say that, when Skellion applied to be a member of a VFW post in Raleigh and said he had won five of the military\u2019s top medals, red flags went up.<\/p>\n

Bruce Edwards, quartermaster of the VFW of North Carolina, said Edwards applied to be a member in June and presented himself as a decorated war veteran with several Silver Stars and Bronze Stars.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was kind of suspicious-looking, because there were so many,\u201d Edwards said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

According to the video, Skellion has been perpetrating this fraud on the American public since he was booted from the military after basic training 25 years ago. He was also the local VFW post historian and ran an online charity.<\/p>\n

Well, at least no one was hurt…well, besides the American Legion, the VFW, the Department of Veterans Affairs, all of his donors on line and at WalMart.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> From TSO, here’s the DD214 the assmonkey used to perpetrate his fraud;<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sweet. He served in Operation Iraqi Freedom while it was on a road trip to Afghanistan. And he was in Desert Shield\/Storm a month before Hussein invaded Kuwait. What instincts! He must’ve been the only US soldier in Somalia for those dates. How brave! And look, he has the Army Airborne Jumpmaster Badge – as opposed to the Army Non-Airborne Jumpmaster Badge. 3rd award of the Southwest Asia Service Medal? How many times did we fight DS\/DS? He sure liked those Unit Awards, too. No High School or GED…we don’t need no steenkin’ edjumacation.<\/p>\n

ADDED:<\/strong> We were linked to the American Legion weekly online update<\/a>. Welcome Legionnaires…we hope you come back often to join us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The local American Legion and VFW in Wake Forest and Raleigh, North Carolina busted a panhandler … Phony vet busted while panhandling at WalMart (UPDATED w\/DD214)<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21858","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21858\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}