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Virginia Sherwood / NBC
Timothy Michael Poe talked about his military service on "America's Got Talent," but military bloggers and others soon realized his story didn't quite add up.
Timothy Michael Poe was an ideal “America’s Got Talent” contestant. The singer, 35, not only could belt out a great rendition of a Garth Brooks song, but he had the kind of story reality shows eat up.
In an episode that aired on NBC on June 5, Poe told the audience and judges that he was injured by a rocket-propelled grenade while trying to protect his fellow soldiers in Afghanistan in 2009. (Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal.)
The injury, Poe said, broke his back and gave him a traumatic brain injury, causing a stutter. It wasn’t until a therapist at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio suggested singing in the shower might help his stutter, Poe said, that he turned to music.
“I don't know what to say to a hero like you,” said “America’s Got Talent” judge Howard Stern.
But almost as soon as the standing ovations Poe received had died away, his story began to fall apart. A lieutenant colonel for the Minnesota National Guard issued a statement saying that Poe’s records didn’t show he was injured by a grenade. His fellow service members began posting online that Poe left Afghanistan due to an ear infection, and that he’d broken his back in an earlier incident back in the United States. Some questioned his stutter, which disappeared completely when he spoke excitedly to “America’s Got Talent” host Nick Cannon after his performance, and pointed out that he was hardly new to singing, as he’d fronted a Minnesota band for years. And it was revealed that Poe had previously claimed medals he didn’t earn, and had provided the talent show with a photo of another soldier from the Department of Defense website when they asked for one of him.
Courtesy Jonn Lilyea
Jonn Lilyea, left, and Mark Seavey blog at This Ain't Hell.
Fans of the show may have been shocked, but Poe's discrepancies didn't faze Jonn Lilyea and Mark Seavey. The two men, both veterans, run the military blog This Ain’t Hell, and they’ve been on the phony soldier beat since 2008.
Related: Supreme Court strikes down Stolen Valor Act
When the Poe story heated up, much of the breaking news was first reported by This Ain’t Hell, as its thousands of readers sent the editors tips and personal anecdotes about the singer.
First, a blog reader who’d met Poe at a golf tournament honoring veterans tipped them off that Poe’s story wasn’t quite adding up.
“She wrote us first thing in the morning (after the show aired) and said hey, you need to get on this,” Seavey told msnbc.com. Soon the blog had posted a blown-up photo of a poster from the tournament showing medals Poe wrongly claimed he earned, and as the story progressed, This Ain’t Hell consistently broke fresh angles on the story, thanks in part to their wide network of readers, as well as the editors’ own dogged research.
At one point, it was revealed that Poe had given the show a photo of another soldier taken in Afghanistan in 2006, when Poe himself was actually there briefly in 2009. A reader of This Ain’t Hell quickly posted a comment thoroughly dissecting the photo and explaining why it couldn’t have been taken in 2009.
“He was in A-stan in 2009 but the picture clearly shows the HMMWV in the patrol as being an M1114 without the Frag 5 kit (the Frag 5 became mandatory in 2007 when I was in Iraq),” the comment read. “He would have been riding in an M1151 which has a completely different configuration for the window on the door.” Few if any mainstream media outlets would have been able to delve into the military detail to that exacting level.
Poe, who was eliminated from the show June 26, was hardly the first to claim false honors and come into the sights of This Ain’t Hell, but he definitely earned them the most attention. “It had a lot to do with the fact that he tugged at (the public’s) heartstrings,” Lilyea said.
But others’ false claims may be even more outlandish. Seavey and Lilyea tell stories of men who Photoshopped their faces into military photos, who got tattoos of medals they didn’t earn, wore Army medals on an Air Force uniform, and who claimed service in Vietnam when they weren’t yet born when that conflict ended.
The blog focuses on varying issues that affect veterans, from post-traumatic stress to the defense budget, but false claims are becoming more and more a part of its coverage area.
“Having been in the military, we come out and everyone wants to tell their story,” Lilyea says. “And you just pick things out that just don’t sound right.” He estimates the blog receives as many as 10 tips a week about false claims, many of which take months to research.
Most of the fakers the blog has exposed do have some military experience, but for whatever reason feel a need to embellish it instead of letting a perfectly honorable, if not headline-making, military career speak for itself.
“To me, it just seems so foreign,” Seavey says of the psychology of those who claim false honors. “You are going to get caught. There is just no doubt.”
It’s obviously important to the men, who work closely together despite living in different states. Lilyea is now a government employee in West Virginia after a 20-year military career, and Seavey is an attorney and veteran based in Indianapolis who manages the American Legion blog The Burn Pit.
“(The fakers) present the public with a poor impression of soldiers,” Lilyea says. “If I can prove that they’re not part of our (military) community, then I’m doing my job.”
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I was a cold warrior mostly the only real medal I ever got was for cleaning up the trash dump (hazardous waste warehouse) to quote from a poem that Capt. I knew wrote I never slipped the surly bonds of earth
was in the army for three yrs. the last yr. 1968-1969 vietnam. the law should read lie about being in the service automatic 3 yrs. stint.
If being a liar is a punishable offense, it would mean we could impeach a lot of worthless members of our government. I guess that is the reason the Court decided that no matter how much I'm offended by the Stolen Valor, I am not injured. Think I'll remember that the next time I use the word "illegal".
Thank you for exposing the frauds. I am a twice-decorated cold-war veteran of the USAF. While I never saw combat, I came very close to getting killed by an operational emergency while on an aircraft. The military is a very hazardous business to be in, whether one ever sees combat or not. Those who never served, never went through accession training, never learned and experienced teamwork and discipline that one experiences and learns only through the military, should never be allowed to claim otherwise.
Since before the time of Shakespeare, people and governments have recognized that there is a unique advantage to having served, particulary with any kind of honor or distinction.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say “These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.”
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day.
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
With the loss of the direct criminal act, there are other laws that can be enforced, many felonies, that relate to false pretenses. Anyone who obtains anything of value, tangible or intangible, through a false pretense that they would otherwise not obtain can ususally be prosecuted. That miscreant politician could be prosecuted for obtaining his salary based on false pretenses that he was awarded a Medal of Honor. The same goes for Poe, whatever financial or other gain he acquired through his false pretenses.
Looks like Gerald1234 should just give up his rants seeing how they are all being deleted.
As for those lying about their non-existent service and medals, I agree with
Put them on the front line and then let them prove what kind of hero they are. They are beyond disgusting.
Eddiethekid::: You are full of crap, I served in Nam 70-71 at Chu Lai in the Americal Div. changed to 23Inf Div. I put away a lot of SUDS . I have never heard of 33. I went to Cam Ranh Bay, then to my duty station in Chu Lai, Went to Quang Tre for 2 or 3 months in support of Lam Sung 719 if I remember right. I was in Direct Support with the 335Th T.C. and kept the choppers maintained to haul your butts to the field. LOL , But you are totally wrong about the 33 crap. Sounds like your time was spent in Saigon lol. We didn't get those chances where I was. But thanks for being there and helping out, no one is better than the other if you served. And no one is a Hero unless he did something to deserve the status. I have several medals from there and from the KYNG while spending 15 years in Charlie Battery 623rd F/A.
I am going to Bookmark this, I know I am going to get a lot of Neg. Feedback lol.