{"id":69091,"date":"2016-11-23T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=69091"},"modified":"2022-01-23T22:53:23","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T03:53:23","slug":"brandon-blackstone-fake-wounded-warrior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=69091","title":{"rendered":"Brandon Blackstone; fake wounded warrior"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stars & Stripes<\/a> writes about Brandon Blackstone who pleaded guilty to lying about his time in Iraq in order to profit from his non-existent injuries. He appropriated the story of fellow Texan Corporal Casey Owens<\/a>, a real wounded Marine. Owens was evacuated from Iraq when his Humvee struck an anti-tank mine. Blackstone was evacuated when he had a case of appendicitis.<\/p>\n

Owens committed suicide on October 16, 2014 and Blackstone appropriated his story for himself;<\/p>\n

Owens\u2019 Marine buddies say they believe Blackstone took key details of Owens\u2019 combat injury and made them his own so he could bilk the government and charities out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s living off a fake story. It\u2019s disgusting,\u201d said Nick Sowers, 38, Owens\u2019 best friend in Iraq who also was wounded in action.<\/p>\n

In his guilty plea, Blackstone, 35, admits that he lied about earning a Purple Heart in Iraq to qualify for a mortgage-free house in Fort Worth from a wounded warrior charity. He also received monthly disability checks from the Department of Veterans Affairs for about nine years, officials said. Blackstone did so by forging two witness statements from Marines who he falsely claimed witnessed his war injury, federal court records show.<\/p>\n

Federal officials have not yet publicly said how much money Blackstone stole from the government and charities. He faces up to 21 years in federal prison when he\u2019s sentenced in February for wire fraud and fraudulent representation about the receipt of a military decoration for financial gain.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You should read the whole story at S&S – it’s a pretty long article. But remember that Stolen Valor is a victim-less crime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stars & Stripes writes about Brandon Blackstone who pleaded guilty to lying about his time in … Brandon Blackstone; fake wounded warrior<\/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":[30,391],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-phony-soldiers","category-valorvultures"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69091","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=69091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69091\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}