Deserter court martialed after 26 years on the lam
After stealing $7,000 from the morale fund he managed, James Everett decided to end his nearly 29 years of service by deserting his ship in 1985. But seein’s how he was crook at heart, he was arrested for falsely claiming VA benefits in his brother’s name which led him to a court martial earlier this year. From the Pilot-Online;
Everett’s time on the lam ended this spring, when a Navy investigator in Norfolk approached him after a courtroom appearance where he’d been prosecuted on an unrelated charge of fraud.
The AWOL sailor’s undoing: applying for a Veterans Affairs pension using the first name of his younger brother, Sampson.
For more than six years, James Everett received $822 a month from the VA. The ruse unraveled in 2007, after Tennessee turned down the real Sampson Everett’s application for food stamps, citing his military pension.
Within weeks, James Everett, an infirm 68-year-old, was back in uniform, on duty and in a military courtroom. This time, he was to be court-martialed for desertion.
His lawyer says Everett suffers from “a chronic disease for which there is no cure.” Yeah, he stole from his shipmates, then stole from the VA after he tossed away his career. The disease is called shitbagitis and there is a cure…intermittent repeated injections administered by Bubba, his cell mate. That’ll clear that shit right up.
Category: Shitbags
His lawyer says Everett suffers from “a chronic disease for which there is no cure.”
Yeah, right. I don’t care about any real or mythical cause, reason or disease. If you do the crime, then you do the time. Up to and including Bubba.
And I hope his former shipmates find out where he is so that each of them can give him a little wall-to-wall counseling as well.
Wow. Just…wow.
I’ve heard of PV2’s and PFC’s deserting, but I’ve never heard of someone with 29 years of service. Certainly not during peace time.
I have–but only if a shitload of money or a woman (or some combination thereof) was involved.
If he did the same thing after retirement, he would forfeit his retirement benefits after the fraud conviction. I guess that he got lucky that he deserted and convicted of the VA fraud before the conviction for desertion.
[…] To steal from the morale fund […]