![\"Sterling-Orlando-Scott\"](\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Sterling-Orlando-Scott-264x300.jpg\")
<\/a><\/center><\/p>\nSterling Orlando Scott was a staff sergeant in the Army and he has at least one Afghanistan rotation. We’ve written about him twice, once last year<\/a> when he was arrested in Maryland for trying to rip off the Coast Guard Mutual Assistance Program while he was posing as an Army Sergeant Major, and once again this month when he was sentenced in Virginia for trying to scam the Army Emergency Relief Fund. TSO sends us a link to the Virginian-Pilot<\/a> which reports that during the sentencing for his latest crime, he tried to scam the judge. Begging for leniency, he told the judge that he had been injured in an IED attack and that his best friend had died in his arms in Afghanistan in 2011.<\/p>\n But Scott’s military record shows no sign of a Purple Heart, which would typically be awarded to a soldier wounded in action, or a Combat Infantryman Badge, which would typically be awarded to a soldier who fought in active ground combat. And in an interview, one of Scott’s former Army supervisors said his staff could find no evidence Scott was injured in any such explosion.<\/p>\n “We could find no record of any combat injury,” said Sgt. Maj. LeRoy Haugland, who supervised Scott in 2012 and 2013 while working with a Warrior Transition Battalion in Fort Bliss, Texas. “No evacuation from Iraq for combat injuries. No record of any ordeal like that.”<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n Scott’s attorney, however, defended his client in an interview. Kevin Pettrey said he knew before the sentencing hearing that Scott didn’t have a Purple Heart, but he believed that was because of how his client was discharged last year from the Army.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n He was busted from Staff Sergeant to Private for scamming AER while he was still in the Army. This was after two tours of Iraq and the last to Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Scott didn’t specify from the stand where his Humvee was blown up, only saying it happened in 2011.<\/p>\n That would have been when Scott was in Afghanistan, but Pettrey said his client told him the explosion occurred in Iraq. Haugland said Scott told him he was injured in Baghdad, and court documents indicate Scott told at least one law enforcement officer a similar story.<\/p>\n […]<\/p>\n While undergoing treatment, Scott said his doctors prescribed him Percocet, morphine and other painkillers. He said he became addicted to the drugs, which he blamed for most of his legal troubles the past three years.<\/p>\n “The medications change you,” he said. “It alters you.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Yeah, well, even that’s true in Scott’s case, there are thousands of war veterans who take their meds everyday and they don’t try to take things that aren’t theirs.<\/p>\n In all, Scott stole more than $11,000 from the Navy-Marine Corps Relief Society and Coast Guard Mutual Assistance, documents said.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like after all I\u2019d been through, someone owed me,\u201d Scott said from the witness stand.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n No one owes me anything that I didn’t earn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"