My brother, Mike – a Navy Vietnam veteran – wrote me of his own experience with the U.S. Navy Veterans Association, a telemarketing scam of which I wrote here.
Back in 2010 I was contacted by phone by someone representing himself as a member of the U.S. Navy Veterans Association. He knew all the right buttons to press and also told me that he was a retired Navy vet and that the association had done so many good things for he and his wife that he had given up his good civilian job to go work for the association. He said he was a Viet Nam vet and told a pretty convincing story about some incidents in DaNang of which I had some knowledge. In short he convinced me to make a donation.
After the call I started thinking about everything he had told me and became suspicious so I looked them up on Google and became aware of the less generous portions of the organization, as told by former sailors and civilians who felt they had been hoodwinked. I suspect that this is when the two reporters in Florida got wind of the story.
In short, I decided not to donate. Imagine my surprise when I got a call several weeks later asking me if I had forgotten about my promised donation. I started relaying some of the info I had uncovered to which the reply was that "there are always some dissatisfied people and that these stories were untrue" and the association's president was soon to expose the whole lot of them. I told him I would wait for the exposé before donating a penny to the association. I'm still waiting. Seems like they caught the ringleader. For once no egg on my face but sadness for the Navy vets who lost out because of this bastard.
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