"Vietnam Veteran" Fraud: Man Who Claimed To Be A Missing POW Exposed As Fraud

"Vietnam Veteran" fraud: A man who claimed to be a Vietnam veteran, missing and presumed dead for 44 years, has now been exposed as a fraud. The story that went viral and swept the Internet by storm has been debunked as a hoax by British newspaper "The Independent".

A film crew found and interviewed the "Vietnam veteran" for a documentary. The "Vietnam veteran" was claiming to be Sgt. John Hartley Robertson, a U.S. Army Green Beret presumed dead since 1969.  He claimed to have been living in the jungle while his wife and children remained in the States and thought he was dead. The documentary, titled "Unclaimed", fascinated people who thought a soldier who was a POW had been found after 44 years.

Instead, he has been exposed as Dang Tan Ngoc, 76, a Vietnamese citizen of French descent. Ngoc has a known history of pretending to be U.S. army veterans. A memo was sent to British news organizations that discredited the story. The memo had been excerpted from a 2009 U.S. Defense Department Prisoner of War Missing Personnel Office report.  

The memo detailed the CIA's longstanding knowledge of Dang Tan Ngoc, including a DNA test that exposed him. In 2006, US military personnel became aware that he had been telling people he was Robertson.

After questioning, Ngoc finally admitted he was Vietnamese and had been lying in order to collect military back pay and funds from Vietnam veterans' groups. The Mail Online reported that ""It can be revealed that the man is not Sgt. Robertson, rather he is a conman who has attempted to suck in members of the Vietnam MIA/POW community and that the CIA performed a secret DNA test on him 20-years ago that confirmed his lies."

Sgt. Robertson remains MIA after the "Vietnam veteran" story was exposed as a fraud.