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Quash fakers

Eric Piotrowski is no war hero, but that didn’t stop the former corporal from pretending to be a Silver Star recipient who valiantly risked his life in Kuwait when Marines first went to war with Iraq during the early 1990s. Now he’s paying for telling that lie.

In late November, two months after Piotrowski pleaded guilty to violating the Stolen Valor Act, which prohibits unauthorized wear of military decorations, a federal judge in California stripped him of his certification to work in law enforcement, as he’d done since 2005, and slapped him with a year of probation. The judge also ordered 200 hours of community service, to be performed at a veterans’ hospital or comparable facility. The U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case accurately termed the punishment “poetic justice.”

Phonies are cropping up at an alarming rate, it seems. Some are civilians with a sad case of Marine envy. Others, like Piotrowski, served honorably though without any extraordinary significance. Since the end of October, Marine Corps Times has profiled four other cases in which bogus claims have led to major embarrassment or worse. In an instance involving an active-duty sergeant who faked being a wounded warrior and scammed free tickets to 33 concerts and professional sporting events, a judge at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., handed down a $25,000 fine on top of an 18-month jail sentence.

Swift, thorough prosecution and punishment is one key to combating this ridiculous trend. But greater resources are needed to allow verification of claims to valor awards. Congress in 2008 proposed a national medals database for the highest valor awards, an enterprise that has stalled. The Defense Department opposes the idea out of legitimate concerns about privacy and accuracy. Those concerns, however, can be overcome. Congress should push to make a searchable database a reality.

That would serve to end this plague of phonies and keep the focus on the real heroes.