The Medal of Honor Fraud Case that Took Stolen Valor to the Extreme

With each letter from a disgusted veteran, William Bassler grew more furious.

Then a federal district court judge in New Jersey, Bassler listened intently as those veterans described how a federal government contractor that sold 300 fraudulent Medals of Honor in the early 1990s had degraded their military service in an egregious example of stolen valor. When Bassler sentenced the defendants, he did not hold back.

"True Medal of Honor recipients and their families have the right to be outraged ...," Bassler said, according to a New York Times article. "My only regret is that I'm limited by the guidelines."

In December 1996, Bassler imposed an $80,000 fine -- the highest possible penalty -- on H.L.I. Lordship Industries of Long Island, New York, which pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count in a plea deal. Lordship, which admitted to selling unauthorized versions of the United States' highest military award for valor from 1991 to 1994, also was ordered to pay the government $22,500 in restitution, an amount that represented the cost of the fake Medals of Honor the company sold for $75 apiece. Finally, Bassler placed Lordship on probation for five years.

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The fallout continued a few weeks later when the Pentagon announced it would stop doing business with the disgraced company, which was manufacturing roughly 60% of U.S. military medals and reaping $9 million per year in business from the government at the time. Ultimately, Lordship was barred from bidding on any government contracts for 15 years, resulting in a projected $155 million loss in earnings.

Some, both inside and outside the military community, insisted those penalties were not nearly enough.

"Most of these impostors are men who have never seen combat," FBI special agent Tom Cottone Jr. told the Pueblo Chieftain, a newspaper in Colorado, in 2004. "They need to feel important, to be someone, and pretending to be a medal recipient is a way to do that. They like to claim it's a victimless crime, but they are stealing the honor from men who gave their lives for this country and from any veteran who served."

Cottone should know. In 1995, posing as collectors interested in pursuing nothing more than a good deal, he and another FBI agent followed a tip regarding illegal medals to a military memorabilia show in New Jersey. They purchased two Medals of Honor, an Army version for $510 and an Air Force version for $485, then arrested the seller, who described himself as a military veteran. (There are three versions of the Medal of Honor; the Navy medal is the other.)

The fake medals were not hard to spot. Unlike the real deal, these supposed Medals of Honor included an extra ribbon bar and were blank on the back, where the honoree's name is engraved on the legitimate medals.

The FBI's purchase led the law enforcement agency to Lordship, which had been the sole manufacturer of the Medal of Honor since 1978, an assistant U.S. attorney told The New York Times. Besides the other penalties, public condemnation and the incalculable loss of credibility, the fallout from Lordship's criminal activity included the removal of two of the company's three owners, who were forced to sell their stock in the family-owned business and sever ties to its operation. Neither a third owner nor Lordship's 120 employees were found to be involved with the scam, the company's attorney said.

The scandal came at a time when the sale of fake Medals of Honor was becoming more prevalent.

"We are not talking about trading comic books or baseball cards," FBI special agent R. Stanley Harris said. "We owe respect and dignity to the people who have made battlefield sacrifices for this country. People are making profits off someone else's sacrifice."

Penalties for wearing, producing or selling a fake Medal of Honor -- a recognition of heroic actions that dates to 1861, the first year of the Civil War -- were increased in 1994 after a slew of veterans' complaints. Since then, Congress passed the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional on free-speech grounds in United States v. Alvarez in 2012. The year after that decision, another Stolen Valor Act was passed that further protected the Medal of Honor against fraud and reaffirmed the earlier legislation making it illegal to sell or purchase the cherished medal.

Despite those good intentions, though, stolen valor is not going away, and some perpetrators can be the most unlikely suspects. Like Bassler, the judge that sentenced Lordship, Michael O'Brien was part of the judiciary. An Illinois Circuit Court judge at the time, O'Brien claimed to be a Medal of Honor recipient and even had two medals framed on his courtroom wall supposedly to prove it. O'Brien's ruse was exposed (and he was forced to resign his judgeship) after he applied for a special Medal of Honor license plate, and someone in the state Department of Motor Vehicles checked with a military veteran they knew. Lt. Col. Harold Fritz realized right away that O'Brien was not part of arguably the United States military's most exclusive fraternity.

"I said he was not a recipient, and I said I'd go after him myself," Fritz told the San Francisco Chronicle. "I thought it was despicable."

Fritz was deservedly livid. He actually has a Medal of Honor, a legitimate one that he received for his actions during the Vietnam War.

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