"Nicholasville man accused of posing as wounded Marine to get service dog"

From: WKYT

NICHOLASVILLE, Ky. (WKYT) - A central Kentucky man is accused of tricking a dog training facility into giving him a service dog by pretending to be a wounded Marine.

According to an arrest citation, Jeffrey Alcorn, 40, posed as a veteran suffering from PTSD to get the dog as well as a free flight to pick up the dog in Georgia. He is charged with two counts of theft by deception.

Alcorn was supposed to be arraigned in Fayette District Court Monday afternoon, but he did not show up.

He was arrested at the Blue Grass Airport on Saturday afternoon after Veterans Airlift Command said he gave them false documents when he was trying to fly. The organization provides free flights to wounded veterans.

Walt Fricke, founder of Veterans Airlift Command, says volunteers were suspicious of Alcorn before he left Lexington. Fricke says they allowed Alcorn to get the dog, so he could be charged with a crime.

"We don't want resources taken away from guys who've earned them," Fricke said.

Fricke says the dog was flown back to Georgia to be given to a "deserving veteran."

According to Blue Grass Airport spokesperson Amy Caudill, Alcorn was arrested when he returned home to Lexington.

WKYT’s Mark Barber spoke with one of his neighbor's about the disturbing allegations of stolen valor.

"That bothers me," said John Metz as he started to tear up.

It’s a difficult case for Metz to discuss because some of his friends never made it home from war.

"Several of my buddies died over there," he explained.

He’s shocked the man who lives beside him on North Keene Way in Nicholasville is accused of lying about his military background.

"He told me he was a Marine," Metz recalled.

Alcorn is out of jail on bond but when WKYT tried to speak with him, the woman living in the house listed at his address didn't want to talk.

According to court documents, when police interviewed Alcorn after his arrest, he told them he lied to the dog training facility in Georgia and gave them false documents because he couldn't pay for the dog.

The arrest citation also states that Alcorn admitted he never served in the military. Court documents go on to say that he claimed it all began with a small lie that snowballed.

Many of his neighbors who respected him as a wounded warrior tell WKYT they are wondering who he really is.

“I call it unfortunate. There wasn't any reason in the world why I wouldn't have thought he was the real thing," said Metz.

Alcorn will be arraigned on the charges of theft by deception on Monday afternoon.

It won’t be his first time facing a Fayette County judge. According to court records, in 1996 Alcorn was convicted on one count of theft by deception and he was also found guilty of violating probation. He spent 30 days in jail and was sentenced to two years of probation.

WKYT called Paws 4 Life, the shelter in Georgia that Alcorn allegedly tried to adopt from, and asked how they vet people trying to get service animals. We are still waiting to hear back from them.

Full statement from Veterans Airlift Command:

When we vet passengers for Travel with the VAC, we don't generally require paperwork as most combat wounded have a trail on the Internet easily found with a simple google or Facebook Search.

However, when something tips us, (and it happens very infrequently - about twice out of over 10,000 passengers) we dig deeper and request more documentation from the passenger.

When "USMC SSGT" Jeffery Alcorn (claiming he had done 8 tours in Afghanistan and Iraq with MARSOC) asked for an airlift to go get his service dog being trained at great expense, given to him by another non profit serving wounded vets, a simple Google search made by one of our volunteer pilots before we even got to do our diligence (as the mission was short notice) found him to be a potential fraud...

While our mission is to serve our combat wounded...not find and prosecute stolen valor cases, this one attempting theft of a service dog trained by good people for a combat wounded vet made us decide to lock and load.

Our passengers are combat wounded. Our small staff are either combat wounded, retired military or family members of such and we felt obligated to put an end to this particular charade of stolen valor, and it's use to defraud good-hearted Americans who's desire is only to do right by our wounded.

We asked for documentation of "USMC Staff Sgt" Jeffery Alcorn's service and he was unable to provide a DD-214 or an award letter from the VA, but he did produce certificates for a Bronze Star and Purple Heart (Our founder has two of one and one of the other of these himself, and they did not come in a cracker jacks box).

Our investigation led us to believe this was a complete fraud willing to take highly valuable resources from a deserving veteran for his own purposes.

We were happy that the Lexington police detectives and FBI agreed.

Our purpose in aggressively pursuing this is to help protect small non profits from this type of abuse and to put future fraudsters on notice that we do not tolerate this kind of activity.

It is our belief that like in a waning economy when loan fraud increases due to excess capacity and fewer borrowers, that the Organizations serving a diminished number of veterans opens the door for this kind of activity to flourish.

Hopefully this serves as a notice to those thinking of "pretending" in order to enrich themselves at the expense of our supporters or those deserving combat wounded we serve.

http://www.wkyt.com/home/headlines/Nicholasville-man-accused-of-posing-as-wounded-marine-to--321996671.html