3.20.2012

Robert Bales was a con artist and petty criminal long before murder spree

Before he signed up for Team America: World Police, mass murderer Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was a Midwest con artist:
Robert Bales, the staff sergeant accused of massacring Afghan civilians, enlisted in the U.S. Army at the same time he was trying to avoid answering allegations he defrauded an elderly Ohio couple of their life savings in a stock fraud, according to federal documents reviewed by ABC News.

"He robbed me of my life savings," Gary Liebschner of Carroll, Ohio told ABC News.

Financial regulators found that Bales "engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorized trading and unsuitable investments," according to a report on Bales filed in 2003. Bales and his associates were ordered to pay Liebschner $1,274,000 in compensatory and punitive damages but have yet to do so, according to Liebschner.

"We didn't know where he was," Liebschner told ABC News. "We heard the Bahamas, and all kinds of places."
So the Army apparently welcomed him in to hide out from the law. He also had incidents of domestic violence and hit-and-run in his background.

Such are the standards the once-proud American military has sunk to in its quest for more warm bodies to perform the grunt work of global occupation. This is what a dying empire looks like.

1 comment:

Charlie McDanger said...

For ten years we've had kids flying drones from a trailer in Nevada and gunners safely out of harm's way up in an AC-130, all blowing people up like it's a video game. For some reason it takes a guy on the ground for the atrocity to count.

Happy Super Tuesday!