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| -Lurid Crime Tales- | ||
| Serious Military Fake Convicted Of 12 Felony Counts, 3-5 Yrs Each | ||
| 2010-07-26 | ||
Sgt. John Rodriguez cut an imposing figure when he was introduced at the Republican committee meeting in the winter of 2008. The decorated Marine and aspiring precinct committeeman came to the event in his green service uniform with some of the military branch's highest honors clearly visible, including the Navy Cross.
"My first reaction was, this guy's a stud," Ryan said. "Then I looked a little more and thought, something's going on here. I'm very, very sensitive about the Navy Cross. I happen to have written one of the citations for the Marine who was killed right next to me in 1967 in Vietnam in a firefight." Ryan's hunch led the former FBI agent to do some digging of his own and ultimately put him in touch with investigators at the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Within a year, the truth was out: Rodriguez, 31, was never in the Marines but had spent years passing himself off as a war hero, gaining access to military bases, getting discounted airline tickets, going to the Marine Corps Ball and briefly getting a job with a local health-care provider that gave him access to sensitive information on veterans. Rodriguez, a former Scottsdale resident, was convicted this month of 12 felony counts of fraud and forgery, most of which carry a presumptive sentence of two to five years in prison. Rodriguez's attorney did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Rodriguez posted $5,400 bail after he was arrested, then failed to appear for his court hearings, leaving him convicted in absentia. This month, detectives in California found Rodriguez near Lake Tahoe, bringing an end to the carefully crafted lie he'd lived. The FBI receives 40 to 50 tips per month about people around the country like Rodriguez, triple the amount the agency received before 9/11. Claiming military service "provides them some sort of feeling of respect," said Lindsay Godwin of the FBI's field office in Washington, D.C., who noted that impostors frequently come out around Memorial Day, Veterans Day and Independence Day. "A lot of the individuals that we've observed that have done this, they usually suffer from some sort of low self-esteem," Godwin said. "This is some immediate gratification for them." While federal agents have seen an uptick in military-hero impersonators in the past decade, investigators say Rodriguez's case was unique. He used his fake military ID to gain access to a base and conned his way into the Marine Corps Ball in Las Vegas.
Rodriguez's temporary work at TriWest Healthcare Alliance, where he could have accessed confidential information on thousands of veterans, was a cause for concern for investigators. "This guy is such a good con man that he has trained with the local Marine Corps unit here . . . he got in Camp Pendleton in San Diego with his ID," said DPS Detective Roger Wilson. "We started kind of considering this as domestic terrorism. NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) was very concerned. From that point on, the level of awareness was heightened." In that regard, Rodriguez differs from run-of-the-mill military impersonators who stop at dressing up like soldiers and wearing medals they didn't earn. Simply putting up that facade could violate the Stolen Valor Act, a 2005 federal law that targets fake military heroes. But that law is in dispute after a federal judge in Denver ruled last month that it is an unconstitutional infringement on free-speech rights. | ||
| Posted by: Anonymoose |