Stolen Valor free speech in MO
Associated Press reports that a Missouri company received seven and a half million bucks in contracts because their owner claimed he was a disabled veteran;
The U.S. attorney’s office in Kansas announced charges Thursday against Warren Parker, Mary Parker, Michael Parker, Thomas Whitehead and Silver Star Construction LLC.
An indictment unsealed Thursday says Warren Parker fraudulently claimed to the government he was a highly decorated, disabled Vietnam War vet. Prosecutors say Silver Star Construction was awarded more than $7.5 million in contracts set aside for disabled veteran-owned companies.
Prosecutors say Warren Parker served five years in the Missouri National Guard and did not have disabled veteran status.
Hey, what’s the big deal…he was only expressing himself and exercising his right to say whatever he wants.
Category: Phony soldiers, Politics
Now now we all know Stolen Valor is a victimless crime…
OT: Jonn, what are your thoughts on the West Point Cadet story as it has played out? I’ve been watching you and Blackfive for your takes on what happened to this guy, but as far as I know neither of you has written about it.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/west-point-cadet-sues-patti-labelles-bodyguards-for-beatdown/
Never mind, search is my friend. I wonder if his suit is going to go anywhere.
“Silver Star Construction,” huh. It is karmic how these tools almost beg for someone to start asking questions about their claims.
How could they NOT figure that the government wouldn’t investigate their claims at some point?
Jeebus.
Yet another reason to get rid of small business set asides. The ease with which you can forge your standing is ridiculous, and they only end up costing the govt more money.
We do millions through small businesses because we have to, to get the work. So there’s someone pushing paper so it looks like we’re helping out smaller companies.
http://www.silverstarconst.net/index.html
Where’s my headache powder…
#5 – not really. Most small business die because of the up-to-8-month time between billing and payment. Our government isn’t so timely paying its bills. It’s why so many of the big companies reclassify business units as 8a (i.e. LockMart) – or the big boys buy up 8a businesses after a recompete.
These folks committed fraud, they got caught, they’re going to pay. The system worked. We don’t need to destroy 8a set-asides just because the system worked.
But did he have an Antarctica ribbon with penguin device?
We have another even larger company here in Utah doing the sal thing. Last week, the founder of his ‘disabled veterans company’ in Park City, Utah, was convicted on theft, fraud, forgery charges against the American Legion in Utah. During the discovery process, it was found this nowconvicted felon in Utah, was already a convicted felon in Dublin, California when he stole $20K from the Dublin Little League who was collecting the money for disabled children!
Further investigation turned up a ‘doctored’ DD214, claiming purple heart, bronze star and airborne status!
This park city ‘veteran’ after his April 2011 arrest, then made application to the VA disability division though he was already operating his Park City Utah company dating to 2005! And it get s even better, folks!
This phoney ‘disabled veteran’ sdvob was the KEYNOTE SPEAKER IN UTAHS VETERANS BUSINESS CONFERENCE IN 2008… AND FLAGGED BY THE DISABLED VETERANS SERVICE OFFICER TO THE STATES PTAC OFFICIALS WHO THEN RETALIATED AGAINST THE SERVICE OFFICER FOR DOING SO, PUTTNG HIM OUT OF BUSINESS WHILE THEY HELPED THEIR CLIENT GO ON TO OBTAIN MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN FEDERAL CONTRACTS.
Some of the current $10M+ contracts are still with L3, Lockeed, Harris, BAE and others. This guy was so brazen he was also featured in NaVOBAs vetrepeurial magazine; as well the regional small business of the year in 2009 forthe SBA – who was told of the initial fraud in 2008 that led to retaliation.
Utah officials were so deserate to create
Sounds like the hurt locker for this section 8 Enron of vet businesses, operating out there in the beautiful Beehive state.
How do you salvage that? Wow, smack down and WTF chronicles? If these types of stories exist – and they DO in this case – imagine what else transpires in every of the set-aside competing FAR boodle of this set aside, teaming, forms of federal contracting. fraud just makes the record skip in this existing game of musical chairs.
There’s a lot of information here – meaning this proposed policing among SDVOB’s for these activities striking the place of qualified businesses; this is a call for a better mechanism to spot check all of today’s FAR competing set asides.
If this story’s true, it will be a game changer in the SDVOB contracting paradigm assistive of parity in the programs!
Let’s hope those state authorities out there make it whole with that watchdog run over in the hurry to create success stories from the wrong parties. Cronyism, greed, fraud – all still a very old world odor!
If convicted maybe this puss bucket should be made to pay $7.5 million to disabled veterans causes. THEN have to apologize to 7.5 million, or how every many disabled vets there are in America! THEN have to go live in france for the rest of his miserable life!
[…] Parker; Stolen Valor update April 10th, 2012 We briefly discussed Warren Parker last year. He was a contractor in Kansas City whose business was suffering so he concocted a war hero story […]
[…] but, as with anything else that has to do with the government, the intentions are easily defrauded. We wrote about Warren Parker back when he was first arrested in 2011, and he’s just the tip of the […]