{"id":92430,"date":"2019-11-05T14:20:45","date_gmt":"2019-11-05T18:20:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=92430"},"modified":"2019-11-05T14:21:10","modified_gmt":"2019-11-05T18:21:10","slug":"counterfeit-veterans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=92430","title":{"rendered":"Counterfeit Veterans"},"content":{"rendered":"

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MilitaryTimes.com just published an interesting article titled:<\/p>\n

“Thieves among honor: counterfeit veterans<\/a>“<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is well-written because he recounts his personal experience writing an article about D-Day when someone called him up and claimed to be an Army Ranger at Pointe du Hoc. It was debunked by someone that was actually there.<\/p>\n

There is no hard count of how many people have lied about their military service, but one of the best sources on the topic thinks the number is in the millions.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He went on to highlight other efforts, one by B.G. Burkett who wrote a book on Stolen Valor.\u00a0 Burkett’s current effort deals with VA fraud, but isolated to the Northwest region of the country.<\/p>\n

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Between March 1, 2008, and Feb. 25, 2009, the VA investigated 96 cases of \u201cstolen valor\u201d fraud, according to James O\u2019Neill, assistant inspector general for investigations. The work led to 48 arrests, the VA recovered $562,888, and authorities levied $1.23 million in fines. Type \u201cfalsify military service\u201d into an online search engine window, and one yields tens of thousands of hits relating case after case in which someone has either exaggerated or completely fabricated their military service.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

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In 2000, upon hearing that the Library of Congress had launched its Veterans History Project, Burkett asked administrators if they were verifying any of the vets\u2019 records. They weren\u2019t. Burkett predicted that half would be frauds.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This has been our experience as well with the Veterans History Project.\u00a0 I’m sure there were legitimate stories captured, but how can generations in the future be assured when people like “Sergeant Major Andy Prado<\/a>” tell his fake stories?\u00a0 When the stolen valor blogs are pixel dust Prado will live on in infamy thanks to the Library of Congess and the Veterans History Project.<\/p>\n

AND, I’ve often wondered about the Civil War and the period before the internet when word of mouth was king. This is staggering…<\/p>\n

Fakery was reportedly widespread during the Civil War and its long aftermath. According to a January 1893 article about veterans\u2019 pensions in Harper\u2019s New Monthly Magazine<\/i>, during a three-year period ending in 1879, out of 4,397 affidavits filed for wartime pensions, 3,084 were false \u2014 at a cost to the government of more than a half million dollars. Poor or nonexistent record keeping makes such fakery difficult to track much further back in history. The suspicion, however, is that it has probably been around as long as people have been on the planet.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MilitaryTimes.com just published an interesting article titled: “Thieves among honor: counterfeit veterans“ It is well-written because … Counterfeit Veterans<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":663,"featured_media":92432,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[408,183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stolen-valor","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92430","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=92430"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92433,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92430\/revisions\/92433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/92432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}