Fake Wounded Warrior Pulled off Fraud in Florida

Hope Fund was sent a fake from Wounded Warrior Project who needed a place to stay. Isn't that what they are supposed to be doing? Aren't they supposed to know who is really wounded, with a Purple Heart or diagnosed with PTSD or TBI?

The article goes on to stay that WWP has been sending veterans to them for a while. Now Hope Fund's reputation has been tarnished because they believed this veteran sent to them was telling the truth.

Hope Fund fraud uncovered as Army veteran's story falls flat 
Jacksonville.com
By Clifford Davis
Tue, Jan 6, 2015

"Bartlett-King was kicked out of the Army with an other-than-honorable discharge due to drug abuse, according to a copy of his records obtained by the Times-Union.

His official discharge papers, or DD214, also show that he never served in Afghanistan, like he told Brangenberg for the original story."

Will.Dickey Jacksonville.com
Leroy Bartlett-King, 26, was kicked out of the Army with
an other-than-honorable discharge
a copy of his records confirmed.

Leroy Bartlett-King told quite the tale to a University of North Florida senior writing a story for a local project known as the Hope Fund that is published in the Times-Union.

The 26-year-old veteran gave a spine-tingling account of stepping on a landmine in Iraq — pausing long enough on the mine’s pressure plate to allow his fellow squad members to get clear of the blast. He continues to stand behind most of his original story today.

“I completely felt like he was being trustworthy,” said the story’s author, Joshua Brangenberg. “Even when we got into specific details about the event, he seemed like he was getting emotional about potential deaths that may have happened.

“I didn’t feel like I had anything to question because not only was his story being corroborated by the social worker, he was also getting emotional.”

The social worker, Suzie Loving, said Bartlett-King arrived at the door of Five Star Veterans Center hunched over in a wheelchair.
“I had a call come in from the veterans service officer from Wounded Warrior [Project],” Loving said. “We’d been making great strides working with them and they would send people to us who needed a place to stay.

“He said they’d met a young veteran in Tampa at one of the PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) clinics who would be released soon and needed a place to stay.

“My concern is to preserve the integrity of the Hope Fund, which has been around for 20 years,” said Judy Smith, HandsOn’s CEO. “What I want readers to come away with is that, while we try to screen in every way, shape and form, sometimes someone like this will slip through the cracks for a period of time – and his period of time is up.”
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