Stolen Valor Fruit

I debated whether to post this but ultimately decided to. The only debate was I could not use names and it may strike some as “So what?” It has its value, however, in pointing out what goes on behind the scenes as well as feeling that the ‘Thank You’ we got should be passed on to the community as well.

We were presented with a case a few weeks ago.  A wife suspected her husband of lying to her about him being in the Army years ago.  He claimed that he served as an Army Ranger.  She went on to say that he doesn’t use these stories to obtain anything of physical or monetary value.  She said that some things just didn’t add up to her.  She tried the FOIA request route but said that she was told that they couldn’t provide her information.   She didn’t want to publicly humiliate him or anything of that sort, but instead just wanted to know for sure if her husband was lying to her and reached out to us for help on how to find out.  She said that she would be very grateful if we could point her in the right direction.

These are very typical of the case submissions that we get – and you, the community, never get to see.   There is no public evidence of him making the claims and/or the informant not wanting to have the case posted anyway.  We instead treat this as a ‘military verification’ case.

So we found no listed military service for him under DoD Manpower / SCRA searching each year since he was 16 y/o.  We also established a timeline of past residences which showed no residence close to a military base.  We also dug up newspaper articles that established him in his hometown and working a non-military job.

We filed with both the US Army and NPRC.  We wrote back to the wife and said that her hunch may be correct.  We said that the potential responses we get back from the US Army and NPRC most likely will say “no records found” but we’d have to wait for an official response.  Even then, the case is something entirely based on circumstantial evidence.  If DoD Manpower / SCRA showed no results, there’s still a chance he served in the Army Reserve or National Guard, but the likelihood is slim to none that they would send someone to Ranger School to qualify and there would be no record of that active duty.  Still, there was no absolute certainty.

We supplied her with two FOIA requests and encouraged her to file with both the US Army and NPRC because if there were multiple “no records found” responses, it could make for a better case.  We also said that it is better to hit someone with overwhelming evidence all at once vs. trickle out some head-scratching details that don’t add up.  For the former, they sometimes come clean.  For the latter, i.e. trickle out, they sometimes will use that to modify the story and in an odd sense they are helped to polish up a lie.

Well, we just got back the US Army FOIA result and it was as expected — “no records found.”

We sent the results to the wife as well as saying that although the FOIA results from NPRC are due to come back, don’t hold your breath since we are still waiting for results from requests filed over two years ago.  The results from the US Army are pretty good, however.  If he had served, they should have picked it up.

She replied saying that she ended up confronting him this past weekend.  He admitted it and “it was downhill from there.”  She went on to say that with the information she had, she was confident he was lying and she felt that her confidence told him that she knew he was lying.  She said that “the confrontation led to so many other things coming to light.”   She also added that “things will be much better for me from this point forward and I can’t thank you enough for your help. If there was more than one of you involved please thank them for me.”

So, even though there was no case to post, this ‘thank you’ should go out to Dave Hardin, someone they call “Snake,” all the wonderful people that write and post articles, and all of you.   There are so many people that contribute to this effort.  Without this community desiring to hear of Stolen Valor violations there would be no effort to expose these folks.  Without your donations and support, cases such as this may never see the light of day, even though they are somewhat private.

Who knows why this guy perpetrated a lie about being an Army Ranger.  He does instruction in firearms so perhaps it involved obtaining ‘street cred’ but who knows for sure?

I know that although we never advocate for direct confrontation, it is always a relief to get a confession.  That means there is no more ‘scorpion dance’ around the facts and what was said.  There is no more requirement for “it appears” or “allegedly” or any of those words leaving a crack in the door that they may be telling the truth but nothing points that way.

In summary, we really wish there were more cases that we can post – or perhaps wish that there are no cases we can post, meaning there are no violations.  But really mean that I wish that for the cases we do get we can clearly post evidence that they made the claims in the first place and the postings can warn others about their stories.  Although we do not advocate for someone taking matters into their own hands, this story sounds like it went in a good direction… at least for her.  I didn’t want to pry, but I didn’t know what she meant when she said that things will be much better for her moving forward.

Stated another way – you all really only see the tip of the iceberg which are those stolen valor cases that check off all the boxes and are uniquely suited to post and offer us legal protection in doing so. Many more cases below the surface that represent the rest of the iceberg are not so clean. This is just a sampling of the work that goes on.

Category: Ranger, Stolen Valor