Combating Stolen Valor: Why this disservice to veterans remains an ongoing problem

Fakery was reportedly rampant after the Civil War, according to a 2010 article in Military History magazine. The article cited a January 1893 report about veterans' pensions in Harper's New Monthly Magazine that said during a three-year period ending in 1879, out of 4,397 affidavits filed for wartime pensions, 3,084 were false--at a cost to the government of more than a half million dollars.

Dozens of elderly men who claimed in the 1940s and '50s to be among the last remaining veterans of the Civil War were later found out to have not served at all.

One, Walter Williams, was believed to be the last surviving veteran from either side in that war when he died in 1959 at the reported age of 117. But later investigations failed to produce any record of his service in the Confederate Army and Census archives showed that he was only 6 years old in 1860 when the war started.

"It is not a new phenomena by any stretch of the imagination," said Ed Caffrey, an Air Force veteran who teaches at Eastern New Mexico University. In 2017, Caffrey directed "Stealing Valor" a documentary about military impostors.

It is impossible to say exactly how many people falsely claim military service or honors. But the problem is widespread enough that even those within the military sometimes get caught lying about their service. Unlike civilians or veterans, current military members can be punished for lying about their military records.

In 2015, an Army master sergeant, that service's second-highest rank, was court-martialed for wearing decorations and badges he hadn't earned including a tab indicating he was a Ranger, a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

He was sentenced to three months of hard labor and his rank was reduced to staff sergeant.

Some veterans even exaggerate their combat experience to the Department of Veterans Affairs in order to get extra benefits, says Christopher Frueh, a psychologist who worked at the VA from 1992-2006.

The VA procedures for checking client's claim are inadequate, said Frueh, who is now a professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo.

He said clinicians were hesitant to challenge veterans' claims to combat duty. Other veterans, though, would speak up.

"In group therapy there were people who were making things up," Frueh said. "Others would call them out."

A study he co-authored in 2005 found that from a sample of 100 veterans being treated for combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder, only 41 had combat experience documented in their service records.

Frueh said the problem was an "open secret" in within the VA. "Nobody wants to study this. The VA doesn't want anything to do with this."

Why live a lie?

Frueh points to two reasons that generally lead people to lie about military service: For financial gain or because of simple insecurity.

Being a veteran can offer certain financial rewards such as VA benefits and preferential hiring for certain jobs. Beside federal benefits, some local governments offer benefits to veterans.

As Frueh's experience at the VA illustrates, the processes of checking a person's veteran status aren't foolproof.

For instance, in 2018, a 71-year-old South Carolina man was sentenced to six-months in federal prison after being convicted of defrauding the federal government of $200,000 in health care from the VA. Keith Hudson, who never served in the military, used a fraudulent DD-214 -- the federal form that details a veteran's military service -- to enroll with the VA in South Carolina.

What makes the case even more striking, the investigation also showed that Hudson had previously been prosecuted for the same scheme using the same DD-214 form in 2005 in Connecticut, where he had been placed in a pretrial diversionary program.

Others lie about military service simply to bask in the attention and respect shown to decorated veterans.

Caffrey divides such impostors into two categories: Those who never served at all and those who embellish their service as Glynn has done.

Exaggerators like Glynn are often driven by insecurity, Frueh said. "They need to have the world think they are more important than they really are."

Sometimes people make up stories of military glory to make up for other shortcomings in their life, Caffrey said.

According to the Michigan Department of Corrections, in 1975, Glynn was convicted of "uttering and publishing," a felony referring to forging documents. He was sentenced to six to 14 years in prison and was paroled after serving fewer than four years.

In 1979, he was convicted of obtaining money under false pretenses in Michigan and violating terms of his parole. He was sentenced to 3.5 to ten years, but was paroled in 1981.

According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Glynn served a year in prison following a 2001 conviction for burglary and making a false statement to an insurance company.

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