A Vietnam veteran responsible for assisting other vets with their benefits in Crowley County has been stripped of his state VFW office and is under investigation for allegedly falsely claiming he had been a prisoner of war.
Ronald Crumley, who denies lying about his record, is employed as the county’s veterans service officer. He has been receiving 100 percent disability payments based on the three years he says he was held as a prisoner of war.
Crumley was a Marine. And he did earn a Purple Heart. But the POW claims he made in May at a week-long Veterans Service Officer conference “raised red flags,” said Joe Potter, a veteran and a member of Gov. Bill Ritter’s Colorado Board of Veterans Affairs.
Potter said Crumley talked to a table of veterans every day at lunch, describing how he was taken prisoner after nearly everyone else in his company was killed.
Potter also said Crumley told the group he receives full disability payments because of the trauma of his POW experience and claimed he served for 30 years and flew 500 combat missions.
Crumley’s service record shows he served 16 years and was a mechanic.
Site calls him phony
Potter said he began researching Crumley’s claims with real POWs. He also turned to Doug Sterner, a Colorado Springs veteran and military historian who has made a full-time job of exposing phony war heroes, and to Mary Schantag, founder of the Missouri-based POW Network.
They all reached the same finding: Crumley was never a POW and other claims he had made about his service record are false.
Schantag has posted him under “phonies and wannabees” on the POW Network website, and a Department of Veterans Affairs investigator is now looking into his record.
“They are blowing this whole thing out of proportion,” Crumley said when reached Wednesday.
Crumley said he was leaving for a funeral that day and couldn’t talk further. He promised that a former Marine general and a former U.S. attorney general from Washington, D.C., will fly to Colorado this week to support his claims.
“This is all because I stepped on some toes and got crosswise with some high-ranking officials,” he said.
Still a county employee
Mike McGrath, a former Vietnam POW from Monument, confirmed Friday that Crumley’s name is not among the 661 surviving Vietnam War POWs.
The Crowley County commissioners said he will continue to work as their service officer.
“At this point, unless there is a charge proven, he is still employed as our county officer,” said Commissioner Matthew Heimerich, noting that the controversy seemed to be based on third-party reports and hearsay.
Colorado State VFW Commander Bill Esch confirmed that Crumley was removed from his position as Colorado Junior Vice Commander and cannot hold office in the organization for the next five years because he used a VFW credit card to buy a laptop computer in 2007 in violation of VFW rules.
“We took care of our issue with him and thought it was best to remove him as a state officer,” Esch said.
A felony violation
Sterner said he has notified the FBI about Crumley’s claims because falsely asserting POW status is a felony violation under the Stolen Valor Act. Sterner said he believes Crumley has been receiving benefits to which he is not entitled.
Questions about Crumley’s record first surfaced after Colorado Springs veterans activist Richard Strandlof was exposed as a fraud in June. Strandlof, a.k.a. Rick Duncan, raised money for veterans causes and spoke at veterans rallies, but never served in the military. He is facing charges under the Stolen Valor Act.
Schantag pointed out that Crumley’s false claims should be taken seriously because he works in a position of trust.
“If he is lying about his record, what else is he lying about?” she said.
Nancy Lofholm: 970-256-1957 or nlofholm@denverpost.com
