This week’s blast from the past “winner” is Thomas Reister. Jonn’s post on him was simple compared to the other posts on phonies. Thomas came with a service dog, he wore paraphernalia identifying him as a Gulf War Veteran, and he sported awards and decorations he did not earn.
For some reason, the organization that gave him the service dog claimed that he had suffered things that only other wounded warriors would understand. A review of Thomas Reister’s official records showed that he left active duty before the Gulf War.
Additionally, it did not show him as earning any warfare specialist badge that would warrant him wearing one of the badges on his cap.
This is one of the posts that would’ve garnered the average amounts of responses that a stolen valor post would’ve received. However, Thomas Reister helped make this one of the stolen valor posts that garnered well above the average number of responses.
It didn’t take long for him to deploy his sock puppets to the thread to try to dazzle us with his baloney.
He jumped onto the post about him and kept arguing. Naturally, you guys jumped in and “ate him alive”. His persistence with trying to get us to respect him resulted in the response count to shoot up to 820.
Too many sock puppet posts to quote here, so I’ll highlight three of them.
Originally posted by “DAVE” (Sock Puppet):
WELL WELL WELL LOOKS LIKE MY OLD FREIND TOMMYS PICTCHER AND STORY IS OFF UR DUMB INTERNET SITE ;FOR LOOSERS. HAH HAH HAH WHO GOT THE LAST LAUGH LOOKS LIKE OLD THOMAS REISTER WAR HERO VIETNAM DESERT STORM MEDAL OF HONOR WINNER WAR HERO VETEREN. U ASS WHOLES PICKED THE WRONG MAN TO MESS WITH AND TELL LIES!!!!
Notice the grandiose claims he makes in that first quote.
He called us losers; however, Thomas Reister was the one that kept getting kicked out. He’s also the one that spent time in a homeless shelter. His attitude, as displayed on the post about him, was a common denominator for these experiences.
He deployed multiple sock puppets to make it sound like he had some buddies defending him. But, with the sock puppets constantly saying, “ASS WHOLE”, constantly utilizing all capitalized words, and constantly displaying similar patterns, we knew better.
Originally posted by “TOM” (Sock Puppet):
U LIKE TO TRY IT ASS WHOLE ID KICK UR A** SO HARD U CAN TASTE UR OWN SH*T. IF U FOUND TOMMY HED WHUP UR ASS AROUND THE BLOCK.
He accused us of being Internet tough guys. However, looking at how he described us in his responses, it was obvious that he was projecting his traits onto us. All one had to do was to read what he said about us to see what kind of person he actually was.
The following quote laments the “disrespect” that he received, the “lies” that he was subjected to, and also laments that he was “cheated on”. Judging by the attitude that he showed on that thread, there’s a good chance that his controlling, combative, sensitive nature drove his responses to other people’s reactions to him… As well as his responses to us.
He didn’t realize that what he was seeing, in his description in the below quote, was a result of those around him reacting to his toxic behavior:
Originally posted by “TOM” (Sock Puppet):
HE DID WORK HE WORKED HIS A** OFF FOR HERE AND ALL HE GOT IN RETURN WAS DISRESPECT AND CHEATED ON AND LIES JUST LIKE THE LIES NOW SOME LEOPERDS DONT CHANGE THEIR STRIPES.
You should mosey over to the other thread to read the hilarious exchange that followed.
Here’s what Jonn said in the original post:
But they haven’t been able to explain how he wears this fugly Desert Storm Veteran cap everywhere, you know, seein’s how he’s not a veteran of Desert Storm;
He’s been homeless at times since he left the Navy and he blames PTSD for his bad behavior, but I don’t know how much PTSD he has or which “unimaginable things that only other Wounded Warriors could comprehend” he’s seen. He spent three years in the US Navy from 1985 to 1988 (he left the service more than two years before Desert Storm) and another nine years in the Navy Reserves. He has no awards for any deployments to combat;
The way I understand it, he does have some disabilities in regards to his legs and knees and he’s being treated by the VA, but those are not service-connected injuries.