Robert Bensh; Big Oil Phony SF/Ranger/Delta
As if the last few days haven’t been exciting enough in our little Stolen Valor community, JD at Professional Soldiers sends us his work on Robert Joseph Bensh, the Executive Director of Cossack Energy Ltd. in the Ukraine. After an interview today, Robert has been a busy little beaver scrubbing any references to his imagined military from the internet where he could. Unfortunately, I got word of his pretend service too late to screen capture any of his profile information, but JD got the text portion. For example, his Facebook profile used to have this little entry on his résumé;
United States Army Special Forces
1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta
Operation Red Wings
75th Ranger Regiment
Fortunately for us, he wasn’t able to scrub journalist reports of his claims like this one from Source Watch
And this one from Ukrainian Energy;
This is what his Twitter profile looked like before he scrubbed it (thanks to GDContractor)
So here is his FOIA;
And his assignments;
It looks like he failed out of National Guard OCS after a couple of years of being an Infantryman. It also looks like he was called to active duty to go to after Desert Shield/Desert Storm, but didn’t deploy (no South West Asia Service Medal) and then he was discharged in 1993. I don’t see anything that would even come close to Special Forces or Ranger, let alone Delta. Well, thanks to JD, the truth is out there now so that Mister Oil Tycoon, here, doesn’t fool anyone else about his truthfulness.
Personally, I wouldn’t trust him as an Executive Director of my expensive oil company if he can’t tell the truth about his honorable career in the E-4 Mafia.
Category: Phony soldiers
Another turd.
I would make a comment about who he could potentially work for but A Proud Infidel might get angry.
Some people seem to build their entire world on a lie. I hope this gets out soon; the oil industry has been dealing with enough, they don’t need someone to go on and make things worse by pretending to be a special forces operator.
Google cache of his twitter feed before he cleaned it up. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:5rJR798Bs24J:https://twitter.com/ironbensh+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a:
See, this is what I was talking about on ol’ Soup Sandwich’s thread – if this guy offed himself out of shame, I wouldn’t care at all.
He wasn’t called up for Desert Shield/Storm, which was 1990-91. He did a 1 year tour of “Active Duty [for] Special Work” for all of FY 1992. That could have been for anything from sweeping the floor at the armory to a special project to backfilling someone who was deployed–basically anything. He got the NDSM because he was on active duty during the window for the award, but he wasn’t called up in support of ODS, at least not ODS as we know it.
Cossack Energy is a public company listed on the ASX (A is for Australian). The other members of the BOD won’t like the publicity…if they become aware of it. Could affect the share price and all that. http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/board.asp?ticker=COD:AU
He’s also a consultant to CUB Energy, who paid him $801,356. It looks like he models himself as an Esq.
http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/people/person.asp?personId=254345&ticker=KUB:CN&previousCapId=247828253&previousTitle=COSSACK%20ENERGY%20LTD
@1, GT, I say DOG TURD!! And NAAAH, I wouldn’t have gotten even the least bit ticked, although with the latest tsunamis of posers and embellishers, APL could make one hell of an expansion!!
Hey!! Nothing wrong with being part of the E-4 mafia!!
A phony phuck and a leg as well.
Don H is correct. ADSW is a different legal status entirely than either involuntary mobilization or voluntary service in support of contingency operations. Looks to me like this guy saw a chance for a steady job for a year, volunteered, and got it.
Can’t blame him if he was hard up for work at the time, and it’s quite honorable service. But it ain’t the same as being involuntarily mobilized. And it sure as hell ain’t the same as being deployed to a combat zone.
Hondo – in the typewritten section above the section VII, why is that last line even there? Why the multi-year gap between it and the line above? No corresponding line on the section VII matrix. Seeing this in his bio “He served as a Financial Analyst for Johnson & Company since 1995 and from 1989 to 1995, he served for the Department of Defense and the United States Department of Justice.” but it doesn’t fit very nicely. I saw some reference that his work with doj was in antitrust. Have seen nothing substantiating a law degree…. only undergrad degrees from Syracuse.
Also, place of entry/separation on FOIA form do not seem to match up with info on Section VII. Confused.
This just goes to show even a rich turd like this has to lie to impress people. The guy did pretty good for himself, did not even have to lie about his military. But did so anyways so he could get a pat on the back and probably intimidate other execs into thinking he was such a badass.
Phony military creds… My guess is he has embellished much of his civilian résumé as well… He certainly has crammed (at least on paper) a lot of BS regarding his private sector experience in a short period of time. If any of that oil industry stuff is factual, why the heck does he need to lie about his military service? I doubt any of his alleged secret squirrel, special ops stuff helped him get any of those jobs…
Reminds me of that govt contractor poser phony down in Florida…
This is what he has on his current LinkedIn profile page:
“United States Army
February 1986 – November 1996 (10 years 10 months)Fort Bragg, North Carolina and Fort Benning, GA”
None of which really matches up to the FOIA info above. Also he claims on FB and LinkedIn to have studied at AZ State University (Political Science is stated on FB)…. so I guess he studied Poly Sci at both Syracuse and AZ ST (?). I smell bullshit and I smell embellishment, and that’s not even counting his Ranger and Delta claims.
Also, notice he does not make any DOJ references in his LinkedIn profile.
Hondo – any ideas regarding my questions in #’s 12 & 13 above?
GDContractor: sorry, missed those questions above.
Regarding the last line of his service listing – yeah, that looks looks a bit odd to me. There may be an explanation, though.
Total military obligation after mid-1984 was 8 years. This guy went in in 1989; he should have been under reserve obligation until 1997. I’d guess he was, but did absolutely nothing and that time isn’t reflected on his service listing (it should be, but sometimes the clerks at NPRC err). It’s also possible his records weren’t properly transferred to or “picked up” by AR-PERSCOM when he left his NG unit in 1993. The latter would be my guess, which would explain the gap in his records.
It looks to me like he somehow managed to re-enter the Reserve Components (or simply “came back from the IRR”) and was assigned to an ARNG unit in Houston, TX, in 1998. He apparently was discharged from same about a year later in 1999. The entry on the FOIA form regarding place of separation would be from the final discharge, not the intermediate one in 1993 when he was discharged from the NY ARNG and released to the IRR to finish his reserve committment. The place of entry should (as far as I know) be the original one. However, after a break in service perhaps they sometimes list the last place of entry into the military.
There should be entries for that last ARNG service under his record of assignments – IF the unit properly made them, then forwarded his DA2 to NPRC after his discharge from the ARNG. However, if he was in the TX ARNG, they may have kept his records under state control if he had no Federal service while a member of the TX ARNG.
Hope this helps. Not sure if this is what happened, but it would make some degree of sense.
Officer Candidate at a National Guard posting? Thought Benning’s School for Boy’s was the only active-duty venue?
Just checking in to see if the usual lawsuit threats have started yet.
The CUB Energy info shows degrees from Syracuse, no mention of Arizona (Mr. Bensh is a graduate of Syracuse University with a BA in Political Science and BS in Economics). That makes sense based on his time with the NYARNG drilling in Syracuse.
@20 Hondo – Thanks for taking a look at it and trying to explain it to me. I suspect he had time in the TX ARNG that is not reflected in the records above, perhaps supporting DEA interdiction efforts on the border; however, I don’t think that would make him a DOJ/DEA special agent, or an “Operator”, and it still doesn’t match the service dates he is showing on his LinkedIn profile. Not that he gives a shit… he’s profited from the lie and is not ostensibly making millions. Turd.
Considering what is going on in Ukraine, and who the players are. I don’t think I would be running around Kiev telling people I was U.S. Special Operations. Seems like you could get a lot of attention you would not want from some hard people.
@22.
With any luck he will keep it up and the problem will just sort of work itself out.
“He is the Energy Adviser to the Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine.” So, he’s CIA. Or is that a secret?
If he is CIA then his cover was blown. You would think someone would have backstopped him better, were this the case.