Hypothetical Situation

[a2capt]

Well, if it's like the latest flight of the X-51A, it won't be long now ...

[NIN]

Here's a non-hypothetical situation that is going to land a former CAP squadron commander in the Federal pokey...

http://www.wbir.com/rss/article/231612/2/Man-pleads-guilty-to-lying-about-military-service-to-receive-benefits

He was a unit commander here in my wing when I moved here in 1998.  Totally full of crap, telling people he was involved in Frequent Wind, Eagle Pull,  Eagle Claw, etc.  His stories stank to high heaven to anybody who knew anything about the latter months of our involvement in Southeast Asia.

He was a traditional ANG guy, full-time city firefighter, fire marshal in the town he lived in, and worked part time as a "security guard" at the AF Space Command tracking station in that same town.  Strange fires kept breaking out on the base when he happened to be working, and eventually he was busted for arson, and it was found he had stolen ANG property in his house.  Lost his firefighter job, got bounced out of the guard, eventually moved away.

He wound up in Knoxville, TN and eventually went on to add the Mayaguez Raid to his resume, it appears.
(the POW Network/FakeWarriors folks got their teeth into it here: http://www.fakewarriors.org/horv/horv_920.htm)

For those of you who TL:DR: He got caught. And outed.  And eventually indicted and plead guilty to defrauding the USG of > $450,000.  He'll be sentenced in December.  Chances are he'll get upwards of 10 years, maybe as many as 30.

[Devil Doc]

http://www.ehow.com/how_2075205_spot-phony-military-veteran.html


Great way to Spot that Phony Vet.

[NIN]

http://www.ehow.com/how_2075205_spot-phony-military-veteran.html


Great way to Spot that Phony Vet.

I spotted a phony two years in a row at my town's Memorial Day parade.  First year, we're marching in the parade and I spot a guy in Navy short-sleeve whites on the right side of the parade route, and he doesn't render courtesy to the colors.   As I get closer, he's an officer, like a full LT, and wearing a fairly full stack of fruit salad for an O-3.  Oh, look: He's got a Budweiser above the ribbons.  But of course he does.  Then I start to notice the inconsistencies: t-shirt hanging out of the sleeves, trousers are cuffed, not hemmed like normal, the guy has arms that would make most poorly drawn stick figures green with envy.  There is no way this guy is Navy, let alone a SEAL.

I see him in the capital plaza afterwards and I'm trying to get some pics of him, but he disappears.  I find the parade organizer, a ANG SF MSgt, and let him know that there is a Navy guy afoot who I am pretty sure is not legit. 

The next year, we're getting ready for the parade in the parking lot used as the marhsaling area and I spot uniforms hanging from the clothes hook in the back window of this quite decrepit Toyota Tercel with out-of-state plates.  Oh, look: Its a set of OD green BDU-style uniforms with a trident over the US Navy tag.   I think this is our boy.

I snapped a couple pics of the car & the unis and kept my eyes open for the guy, but I never did see him.

Later that year or the next, he got busted in Vermont for similar shenanigans
http://www.fakewarriors.org/phonies/phonies1248.htm
Scroll down to "Phillips, Matthew"

[LGM30GMCC]

Just a note:

Some of us non-fakers won't have DD 214s yet and the paperwork justifying it can be really a PITA to read.

I could print out my awards/decs page from vMPF for all my AF ribbons, but for my 3 badges it gets more complicated.

You would need to be able to read a SURF and know the rules that go with the space badge vs the missile badge to decipher that I can wear those two.

The jump wings are a little harder because they are not for an aeronautical rating so the AF isn't tracking them (it kinda doesn't care much because most officers who have them got them from the AFA.)

My point for this is simply that you can't say 'DD 214 or you can't wear it!' And some of the paperwork to justify stuff is so hard to read it's nearly unfake-able because it is undecipherable if you haven't been trained to read it.

[lordmonar]

I don't think I have any paper work for my master maintenance badge.

Got your seven level, got your time in the AFSC, put on MSgt you went out and got your Master Badge.

[PHall]

I don't think I have any paper work for my master maintenance badge.

Got your seven level, got your time in the AFSC, put on MSgt you went out and got your Master Badge.

Dude, there IS "paperwork" for your Master Maintenance Badge. It may be a transaction that your orderly room did on vMPF.
But it is there and it should have shown up on your DD214.

Sounds like it's time for a Correction of Military Records.

[a2capt]

Some of us non-fakers won't have DD 214s yet and the paperwork justifying it can be really a PITA to read..

I'm pretty confident that the gist of that wasn't DD 214 or no go, but rather just use something to substantiate it. Which typically is a DD-214, but not always.

[Stonewall]

Just a note:

Some of us non-fakers won't have DD 214s yet and the paperwork justifying it can be really a PITA to read.

I could print out my awards/decs page from vMPF for all my AF ribbons, but for my 3 badges it gets more complicated.

You would need to be able to read a SURF and know the rules that go with the space badge vs the missile badge to decipher that I can wear those two.

The jump wings are a little harder because they are not for an aeronautical rating so the AF isn't tracking them (it kinda doesn't care much because most officers who have them got them from the AFA.)

My point for this is simply that you can't say 'DD 214 or you can't wear it!' And some of the paperwork to justify stuff is so hard to read it's nearly unfake-able because it is undecipherable if you haven't been trained to read it.

Nothing is ever concrete, i.e. you won't have a DD214 for someone actively serving in the military.  But if you're active duty and wearing some bogus crap, you've got a lot more to worry about than getting in trouble with CAP.  I'm pretty sure a school certificate (Airborne, Air Assault, SCUBA, etc.) would be sufficient.

[NIN]

Not even speaking to the particular service items (badges, ribbons/award), sometimes the poseurs don't get how things work in the "RealMilitary™" and their stuff just doesn't work.  For example, if you started as a Cav Scout, you're probably not going to be in Delta Force in your 2nd enlistment.  If you went to UPT in 2006, chances are you're NOT flying as an Aircraft Commander in 2007.  You don't go to OTS and wind up flying F-16s unless you are _the_ highest-speed officer in the Air Force.

And then there are claims like "Well, I was in a B-52 crash in the Indian Ocean" (Note: I have not had anybody claim this).  There are only so many B-52s, only so many have crashed in the Indian Ocean, and it takes about 12 seconds of Google to get everybody's name on the crew of the one that did..  Were you the guy sitting on the floor between the Bomb/Nav and the DSO?

In the case of my friend's AF officer, he claims (among other things)  to have punched out of a jet, leaving a smoking hole in the side of a mountain in the CENTCOM AOR.   Well, there are only so many ejections over that area, and plane buffs document darn near every airframe loss by tail number.   It won't be hard to confirm the loss.  "You say you lawn-darted a Mudhen in June of 2007 in A-Stan?  Thats funny, the AF doesn't list any loss of an F-15E, or any F-15 Class A accident at all from April to October 2007..."  (not sure if that is the case, but I'm just using that as an example)

Eventually, they trip over their own stories. "You got your left-seat checkout in April of 2009?  Didn't you say you were the AC for a paradrop mission in 2007?"

[Eclipse]

A DD214 is only one of a number of ways to substantiate things.  If you want advanced promotion, what NHQ will accept is probably
more limited than what would be acceptable locally to a Unit CC in terms of badges and decorations.

I'd even accept a sworn affidavit for things that were my local call - that at least puts the onus on the member and
raises the stakes to legitimate fraud for fakers.

[Devil Doc]

I didnt get advanced rank

E4 was my highest Rank, so ya 2nd Lt is much higher

[Stonewall]

What's funny is that I am far from an aviation enthusiest, but I do love me an air show.  And since AE was forced down my throat in CAP as a cadet so I could promote, I do have better than average knowledge of military aircraft and even some civil aviation things with wings.

I find it funny when me, a ground pounder wanna-be type, busts a dude/dudette for faking some sort of pilot rating.  Seriously?  An F-15 Hornet?  Come on, you gotta know the rules before you can break'em.

[Persona non grata]

We all know that the F-15 Hornet was the carrier version of the Eagle

[lordmonar]

We all know that the F-15 Hornet was the carrier version of the Eagle

Well....I could talk about that project but it was classified Top Secrit Majectic-5 so I would have to flashy thing you afterwards! 

[Майор Хаткевич]

We all know that the F-15 Hornet was the carrier version of the Eagle

I thought it was called Seagull?

[Persona non grata]

Ha god one^

[PHall]

We all know that the F-15 Hornet was the carrier version of the Eagle

I thought it was called Seagull?

Rookie!     It's called the Seahawk!!!

[The CyBorg is destroyed]

The F-15N Sea Eagle was proposed in the '70s.

A modeller on HyperScale (one of my favourite sites) did a very good modification of an F-15E kit to depict a hypothetical Sea Eagle:



Thanks to Darren Mottram for the excellent modelling experiment!

[SarDragon]

We all know that the F-15 Hornet was the carrier version of the Eagle

I thought it was called Seagull?

Rookie!     It's called the Seahawk!!!

Nice try.

The Seahawk is the Navy version of the H-60.