The front lines of Stolen Valor

The front lines of Stolen Valor are battles in court rooms and on the internet where folks who are phonies are fighting against the Truth. One of the reasons that we here at This Ain’t Hell are on the front lines is because we have a lawyer on the staff of writers. TSO is able to swat many of the threats of legal retribution away. But there are times that we have been in the courtroom. Here are some the battles that we and our friends have fought;

Frank Visconi

Frank Visconi wanted to be a staff sergeant of Marines so much that he took his phony documents and claims all the way to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Our buddy, Mary, had to defend herself against Frank in a court room when he called into question the documents that she got from the National Personnel Records Center. That resulted in the demise of the old POW Network website.

As recently as few days ago, Visconi continues to harangue and coerce in an attempt to get us to call him a staff sergeant of Marines, but who am I to argue with the 6th Circuit?

Phillip Dale Monkress

Monkress claimed to be a Navy SEAL, and he wasn’t a SEAL. But he wanted to be a SEAL so much that he hired a hitman, Paul Wickre, for tens of thousands of dollars to take this blog off the internet so Monkress could continue telling his tall tales of derring-do. We know that because Monkress defaulted on his payments when Wickre failed in his task and Wickre took him to court. Wickre was nice enough to lay out the whole scheme in court documents. He also hired a private investigator, Jared Stern in order to intimidate us. It turns out that Stern had been a Marine, but mostly AWOL through his term of service. Stern has taken to ignoring our lawyer’s phone calls and emails – I’m sure that will pay off for him, too.

Wickre also took me to court to get a restraining order against me, but because he was also facing charges that we levied against him for making threats, he pleaded the Fifth Amendment and dropped his restraining order against me. Wickre continues as recently as this weekend posting threats against us.

Daniel A. Bernath

Daniel Bernath wanted a promotion to Chief Petty Officer, so he photoshopped a picture of himself with the new rank. He stole the picture from another petty officer to do that, so he ended up with more decorations and awards than he earned, so he came to the attention of Scotty who sent us his work. Mr. Bernath wants so badly to be a Chief Petty Officer, that he took us to court. Not only us, but a whole bunch of people, some of whom have never heard of this blog, all in pursuit of his unearned valor. He also filed a restraining order against me that fell on it’s face. In the opening moments of the hearing, he tried to force me to call him a Chief Petty Officer, of course, I didn’t, so he remains one of the dumbest lawyers in the history of the profession although he’s tied with Visconi, somewhat.

After publishing lies on his weird website (that has dissappeared oddly enough) Bernath has pretty much shifted fire from us to the American Legion and he’s taken to harassing our buddy, SEAL, Don Shipley – two entities that have nothing to do with this blog. I doubt he’ll emerge unscathed from that pursuit.

Bernath has been successful, however, in assembling a foursome of phonies who are arrayed against us now in some sort of Stolen Valor cabal. They feed off each other’s lies and they think that they’re successful even though every legal venue in which they’ve appeared has been a failure. By the way, Bernath, is indebted to a number of us now for our legal expenses if that tells you anything about engaging us in a court room.

Ron Mailahn

I’m still waiting for countless more lawsuits to appear, it seems that we get threats at least a few times every week, although the threats have dropped off somewhat. One of the first was Ron Mailahn, who couldn’t even spell the word lawyer let alone find one. He pops up occasionally with more threats of legal retribution forgetting that we’re unforgiving.

Aaron Elijah Colyer

Aaron Elijah Colyer, the Occupy Reverend, threatened to sue us and to send the internet terrorists Anonymous after us for questioning his dishonorable service, and that came to nothing. He took to sending links from Bernath’s bogus websites to our Twitter followers. They laughed him off and that didn’t help his credibility much.

James Deon Korfhage

Not all of the threats are legal, some are quite illegal, like those of James Deon Korfhage;

Of course, he never showed up at the TAH fortress. Folks tell me that he claims that’s not him in the phone call, but he’s still up to lying-ass ways, although he’s somewhat more subdued. He still terrorizes folks there in Georgia, hiding behind his stories of being a combat-wounded Ranger. But, the local police are now aware that he lied.

Stolen Valor investigations involve more than just posting pictures on the internet. It is being able to stand up to the criminals who commit the crimes. Thankfully, TSO and I are in synch in that regard. I doubt that this website would even exist in it’s current form without TSO and his infantryman approach to the whole subject. We’re willing to take it to the mattresses if need be. Together we’re blazing the trail for the newbie SV websites that follow us.

Category: Politics