Conman who posed as wounded veteran held on $1M bail

Conman who posed as wounded veteran held on $1M bail after giving 'full, video-recorded confession'
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
BY SHAYNA JACOBS
January 6, 2016

More than 200 forged checks, military uniforms, fake passports from Canada and the U.K., and other false official documents were recovered from the 10 Hanover Square apartment he rented.

JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Jeremy Wilson went before judge Heidi Cesare wearing a grey Harvard Law School hoodie, dark blue jeans and a grim expression.

It's the end of a long con.

A seasoned grifter who posed as a wounded veteran and used stolen loot for a Manhattan pad gave a “full, video-recorded confession” to his latest antics — less than two months after leaving prison for similar crimes, prosecutors said Wednesday.

Jeremy Wilson, 42 — whose true name is unknown because of his rampant use of fake identities in a “Catch Me If You Can”-like career of scamming — was ordered held on $1 million bail at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court.

Wilson got up to his old tricks again at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

He “created an alias and posed as a U.S. Army veteran,” Diaz said.

At the prestigious college, Wilson hung around campus and “stole computers and an MIT corporate credit card.”
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PTSD Risk Rooted in Stress

PTSD Risk Rooted in Stress
Washington Post - United States
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Tuesday, December 9, 2008; 12:00 AM

TUESDAY, Dec. 9 (HealthDay News) -- A decade-long study into post-traumatic stress disorder among combat veterans and their identical twins has yielded critical information on the root causes of this devastating condition.

The researchers found that both genetic and environmental factors increase the risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The work, to be presented Tuesday at the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology annual meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., was sponsored by both the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health and the Veterans Administration.

"In addition to building our understanding of how PTSD comes to exist, we may have useful signs for PTSD prevention and treatment," study author Dr. Roger Pitman, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said during a recent teleconference on the research. "For example, persons with recognized PTSD risk factors may be best advised to avoid occupations that would have them serve in highly stressful situations, such as serving in military forces. Things acquired as a result of stress are more likely to be reversed by treatment and could be taken as targets of PTSD treatment."

Pitman's group studied more than 100 combat veterans of the Vietnam War, each of whom have an identical twin who did not serve in combat.

"We made the assumption that, because twins have the same genes and the same family upbringing, that the twin who did not serve in combat represents what the combat-exposed twin would be like except for the combat exposure," Pitman explained.

Prior to this research, experts had noted a smaller hippocampal volume (the hippocampus is a part of the brain involved in memory) in people with PTSD.

Now it appears that the smaller volume exists in both the exposed and unexposed twin, indicating that this may be a preexisting risk factor for PTSD.

"This suggests this 'fragile egg' hypothesis -- that some people are probably genetically a little bit less resilient [to PTSD] than other people," said Dr. Julie Fudge, an associate professor of psychiatry and neurobiology and anatomy at the University of Rochester Medical Center, in New York.

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Commentary: Candidates should seek votes of Muslim-Americans
Story Highlights
Nafees Syed: Candidates are courting voters like Joe the Plumber

Syed: They should reach out to Muslim-Americans, who feel shunned

Obama may not be Muslim, but he should campaign for their votes, she says

Syed: I applaud Gen. Colin Powell for recognizing we are Americans, too

By Nafees A. Syed
Special to CNN


Editor's note: Nafees A. Syed, a junior at Harvard University majoring in government, is an editorial editor at The Harvard Crimson as well as a senior editor and columnist for the Harvard-MIT journal on Islam and society, Ascent. She is chairwoman of the Harvard Institute of Politics Policy Group on Racial Profiling. She grew up in Atlanta, Georgia.


Harvard University student Nafees Syed says both candidates should reach out to Muslims in the U.S.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- During this election, we have seen the spectacle of two presidential candidates fighting over one voter while snubbing an entire segment of the American population worthy of their attention.

We in the Muslim-American community look wistfully at people like Joe the Plumber, wishing that we too could be courted for our vote by the presidential candidates.

At the same time, we look gratefully at figures like former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who reassure us that there is hope for greater acceptance of Muslim-Americans.

Over time, we grew to expect standoffish treatment from the Republican Party. Almost a decade ago, many Muslims, my parents included, supported President Bush for his humble foreign policy stances, strong family values and reaching out to the Muslim-American community.

Things have obviously changed since September 11, 2001, and we have grown used to anti-Muslim rhetoric from Republican candidates. We have run like refugees to the Democratic Party, only to find reluctant tolerance and hope that we will go somewhere else.
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http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/23/syed.muslim/index.html

Top researchers to explore stress and anxiety, trauma, poverty and addiction

Oct 15 2008, 5:41 PM EST

Top researchers to explore stress and anxiety, trauma, poverty and addiction
EUREKALERT

Contact: Ginger Pinholster
gpinhols@aaas.org
202-326-6421
American Association for the Advancement of Science

Promising scientific investigations that might someday yield new strategies related to anxiety, addiction, trauma caused by war or natural disasters, and brain development among children growing up in poverty will be the focus of a seminar on "Science, Stress and Human Health."

The 2008 Philip Hauge Abelson Advancing Science Seminar will take place Friday, 24 October at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 12th and H Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C. (near the Metro Center subway stop).

The lecture will run from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. There will be a breakfast beginning at 8:00 a.m., lunch at 11:30 a.m., and a reception at 5:00 p.m.

Robert Sapolsky, the John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Neurology and Neurological Sciences at Stanford University will deliver the seminar's keynote lecture on stress-related disorders and society at 8:40 a.m. Dr. Steven E. Hyman, provost and professor of neurobiology at Harvard University, will deliver the capstone address concluding the ten-speaker seminar. The program will be moderated by Alan I. Leshner, chief executive officer of AAAS and executive publisher of the journal Science.
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http://www.genengnews.com/news/bnitem.aspx?name=43602171

Harvard Professor: VA Can Expect 800,000 Iraq and Afghanistan War Patients

Harvard Professor Bilmes: VA Can Expect 800,000 Iraq and Afghanistan War Patients and Disability Claims

Statement of Linda J. Bilmes
Kennedy School of Government
Harvard University
February 13, 2008

US House of Representatives Veterans Affairs Committee
Subcommittee on Disability Assistance and Memorial Affairs

Thank you for inviting me to testify before this committee today. I am Professor Linda Bilmes, lecturer in public policy, at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. This year I have given testimony regarding veterans issues on three previous occasions: on October 24, 2007 (before the House Committee on the Budget); on May 23, 2007, before the House Veterans Affairs Committee Claims Roundtable; and on March 13th, 2007 before this subcommittee. I would like to enter copies of all three of these previous statements into the record.

Today I will discuss some of my recent research and resulting recommendations on how to improve the disability claim process. The purpose of these recommendations is to: (a) reduce the backlog of pending disability claims; (b) process new claims more quickly; and (c) to reduce the rate of error and inconsistency among claims.

I will very quickly review the context of this discussion, which I am sure is familiar to members of this subcommittee.

First, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) currently has a backlog of 400,000 pending claims and another 200,000 claims that are somewhere in the adjudication process. This backlog has nearly doubled since the 2001.

Second, VBA expects to receive an additional 800,000 to 1 million new claims during the next year. To date, 230,000 veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have filed claims, but the majority of claims for that conflict have yet to be submitted. My own projections, based on estimates from the first Gulf War, predict that a total of 791,000 veterans from the Iraq/Afghan wars will eventually seek disability benefits. However, many veterans’ organizations have suggested that my estimates are too conservative, considering the length of deployment and the number of 2nd and 3rd deployments into this theatre. It may well be that the number of eventual claims is far higher.
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http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/9381

Hmm, and I didn't even go to college!