Stolen Valor: A Pennsylvania Man Falsely Claimed To Be A Decorated Veteran So He’d Get A Lighter Sentence, But Instead, He Got A Longer One
A Pennsylvania man who lied about being a decorated Marine in order to get a lighter sentence for theft and weapons crimes will instead be getting a tougher sentence. He had a few extra months added for the crime of “Stolen Valor,” which is lying about one’s military service and honors.
As Fox News reports, Shane Sperow, 43, was initially sentenced to six to 23 months on an assault conviction. However, now that it’s become clear that he lied about his military service, he’s been hit with an additional 21 months to five years for lying about it.
Trying to get a lighter sentence, he lied about being a decorated Marine sniper: https://t.co/MmW2lT0N5P #stolenvalor #marine #usmc pic.twitter.com/XUEPw5XFwC
— Newscutter (@NZCUTR) October 27, 2016
As the Reading Eagle reported in April, Sperow had been something of a petty criminal around St. Lawrence, Pennsylvania, for some time before being arrested for a couple of weapons and fraud crimes. Specifically, he had been rung up on probation violation charges for having brass knuckles and other weapons in his home, even though he was forbidden from possessing weapons following an earlier assault case. In another case, he had defrauded a scrap metal recycler by falsifying the weight of aluminum he submitted on payment slips.
When he appeared before a judge on those charges, he pleaded guilty. However, his attorney, John Elder, presented the court with a list of deployments and honors he had supposedly received as a Marine, hoping he could get a lighter sentence. The ruse appears to have worked.
However, court officials investigated Sperow’s claims and found out that none of them were true.
Specifically, Sperow had claimed to have enlisted in the Marines and then served as a sniper in deployments ranging from Operation Desert Storm to Somalia and Afghanistan. He claimed to have served in the Marines First Force Recon, a special forces unit, and Sperow said he saved the lives of four of his fellow Marines. He also claimed to have been injured by a roadside bomb, and for his so-called heroics, he was allegedly awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star Medal with Valor.
Authorities searching his home found uniforms and medals, as well as a forged certificate of honorable discharge.
As it turns out, Sperow had never served in the military, something they determined by simply picking up the phone and calling the Marine Corps, which keeps records about this sort of thing. They said that Sperow had never served a single day in a Marine uniform, and the closest he had come was in 1997 when he apparently filled out the enlistment papers but never followed through, according to District Attorney John T. Adams.
“This masquerade spanned well beyond just his appearance in court. He also told many others that he had a military background.”
His scam having been revealed, Sperow will now be serving the full sentence for his original theft and assault charges, as well as additional time for lying about his military service.
Sperow isn’t the first person to have falsely claimed to have been a military veteran. In fact, the problem of people falsely claiming to be a veteran, either to gain an advantage or simply because they like the attention, is so odious that the crime has a very appropriate name, which is Stolen Valor. And, it’s a federal crime.
“Stolen Valor Act of 2013 – Amends the federal criminal code to rewrite provisions relating to fraudulent claims about military service to subject to a fine, imprisonment for not more than one year, or both an individual who, with intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit, fraudulently holds himself or herself out to be a recipient of [various military medals].”
Do you think “Stolen Valor” is a crime, and people who falsely claim to have served in the military and received honors for their service should be given a prison sentence?
[Featured Image by Billion Photos/Shutterstock]
