"They're always [Navy] SEALs or Special Forces," said Kimey. "Nobody ever masquerades as a cook."
LOLOL, how true......
Vet: More like Special Farce
Faces federal charges for posing as war hero
BY THOMAS ZAMBITO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Wednesday, May 2nd 2007, 4:00 AM
Louis Lowell McGuinn and his fake batch of medals get exposed.
When masquerader Louis Lowell McGuinn showed up at a military ball wearing a rack of Army ribbons, real vet Mark Kimey knew something wasn't right.
Maybe it was the sappy salute McGuinn clipped off while posing with a group of Tuskegee Airmen, said Kimey, the retired Army lieutenant colonel and West Point graduate who outed McGuinn.
Or maybe it was McGuinn's boast that he'd served in the Special Forces.
"They're always [Navy] SEALs or Special Forces," said Kimey. "Nobody ever masquerades as a cook."
Kimey sent a photo of McGuinn at the event at the Hotel Pierre on Fifth Ave. in October and forwarded it to Special Forces headquarters.
It set off a chain of events that led to McGuinn's arrest Monday on federal charges of posing as a war hero.
McGuinn, 62, of Queens, became the first person in the nation to be prosecuted under the Stolen Valor Act, a four-month-old law that exposes fakers to a year in prison.
The photo made it to Doug Sterner, a military historian in Colorado, who checked his database of medal winners.
McGuinn wasn't among the recipients of the Purple Heart, the Silver Star or the Distinguished Service Cross - some of the many awards that graced his chest, Sterner said.
McGuinn, who also went by Lowell Craig McGuinn, had been discharged as an Army private in 1968 after serving in Vietnam but claimed to have achieved the rank of lieutenant colonel, Manhattan federal prosecutors say.
tzambito@nydailynews.com
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...ial_farce.html