The strange case of Christian Desgroux

Last week we talked about Christian , a 57-year-old Chilean native who pretended to be a Lieutenant General of the Army variety. As a phony general, he directed the pilot of a rented helicopter to land at a secure facility. It turns out that he was trying to impress a married woman, according to the Army Times;

It was around sunset on Nov. 6 when the pilot of the helicopter chartered by Desgroux landed on a soccer field at the sprawling corporate campus of SAS Institute in Cary.

As security officers approached, Desgroux stepped out wearing a “full military battle dress uniform” and displaying three stars that implied a rank of lieutenant general, Homeland Security Special Agent Tony Bell testified.

“He saluted the security officers, and they actually saluted him back,” Bell said.

A suspicious security supervisor confronted Desgroux, who told him he was there to pick up a female employee to take her to Fort Bragg for a classified briefing that had been authorized by President Donald Trump.

But none of it was true: Desgroux later acknowledged to federal agents that he had never served in the U.S. military, Bell said.

The woman, a longtime acquaintance of Desgroux, expected him to arrive in a car for a visit. Instead they went on a 30-minute helicopter ride around Raleigh, Bell said.

“She had no idea that he was flying a helicopter to pick her up,” Bell said. Bell testified that Desgroux wanted to pursue a romantic relationship, but the woman is married.

She and the pilot, who has not been charged, appear to have been swept up in Desgroux’s strange behavior.

“She didn’t know what to make of it,” Bell told the judge. “She just went along with it.”

From The Washington Post;

The helicopter took off, but Desgroux wasn’t sure where they should go, so they circled Raleigh for about half an hour, Miller said. The pilot added that the woman claimed her headset wasn’t working properly, saying she could not hear him or Desgroux during the flight.

“I’m not convinced [the headset] had problems,” Miller said, describing the woman as “extremely nervous,” although he chalked up her apprehension to preflight jitters.

After about half an hour, the helicopter returned to SAS’s campus and dropped off the woman, which is when SAS security officials called local police, the AP reported. Miller and Desgroux took flight again, and the pilot declined to drop Desgroux off near a Raleigh supermarket in the dark.

The total cost for about three hours total flight time was more than $1,500, Miller said.

It was the second time Desgroux had chartered a helicopter from the company. In 2017, he also wore an Army uniform on a flight to Jacksonville, N.C., where he talked about plans for another flight to land at the Pentagon, Miller said. The pilot told Desgroux he needed written authorization from authorities.

Well, Desgroux said, he could land at “the embassy,” Miller recalled him saying, but he did not clarify which of the 177 diplomatic missions in Washington he meant.

I think the world is a safer place with Desgroux confined.

Category: Dumbass Bullshit