His computer dings with Facebook messages and his phone buzzes with texts, many of them from a loose network of self-styled investigators, mostly veterans themselves, scattered across the country.Īnderson, a staff sergeant on active duty in the South Carolina National Guard, has been doing this work of his own initiative and on his own time for several years.
Fueled by coffee and Coke, he goes about unmasking imposters as a detective might, digging through public records and compiling dossiers. But boasts like these fire Anderson’s suspicions.įrom a laptop at his kitchen table, in a quiet subdivision outside Columbia, South Carolina, Anderson investigates a particular form of lying that’s come to be known as stolen valor: civilians fibbing about military service, and veterans embellishing their records with bogus claims of battlefield medals and missions with elite units. The tipster says a man claiming to have served in Vietnam with Charles Beckwith, the late founder of the Army’s elite Delta Force, is using that association to sell his training skills to police departments. The day’s first lead arrives in Anthony Anderson’s inbox mid-morning.
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