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What do Sgt. Maj. Billy Zinnerman (left), Maj. Dr. Le'on Willis (center) and Sgt. 1st Class Stanley Wineberg (right) have in common? They all live in Arizona, they all made up their titles and they all benefitted in some way by tricking people into believing they didn't.
the most portentous service medals — it’s time to pay the piper. The Bronze Star dangling next to the brass buttons of his midnight-blue jacket? The American War Memorial Library says he never received one. Museum-quality Bronze Star replicas are plentiful online, where they sell for as little as $10. Zinnerman has been crafting and advancing his spurious saga since at least 2010, when, ironically, he pontificated about moral upstanding on PBS’ bygone Ethics NewsWeekly. In retrospect, it was a scintilla of credibility that metastasized into a whole new identity for Zinnerman. Suddenly, he was no longer a low-ranking pawn with a lengthy criminal record, booted from the service amid accusations of repeated misconduct. He was a war hero and Maricopa City Council hopeful, and he intended to keep it that way. Zinnerman’s guile empowered him to con his way to the top. He hoodwinked Maricopa’s American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars posts, the Marine Corps League of Arizona and eventually the Marine Corps itself. In November 2022, Zinnerman appeared at the 247th Marine Corps Ball as its guest of honor. Six months later, he was lauded by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters as he delivered the keynote speech at a commemoration in Inglewood, Calif., and accepted an award from the city’s mayor. At the event, Zinnerman recounted fantastical tales of a helicopter crash in Afghanistan, surviving gunshots in Kuwait and rescuing his comrade from a burning car in Hawai’i. He brazenly described a quarter-century of military service that culminated with an honorable discharge in 2002. Zinnerman said he was a gunnery sergeant in Iraq in the years leading up to 9/11, leading a unit that identified targets for laser-guided missiles. Public records paint a different picture of Zinnerman at that time — one of a career criminal in Los Angeles. By 2002, Zinnerman had been charged with nearly two dozen felony counts of burglary and theft, among other things. He was convicted at least four times, public records show. The records also suggest Zinnerman never left Southern California between 1980 and his reputed retirement in 2002. Fewer than 1% of those enlisted ever reach the rank of sergeant major, according to the Sonoma, Calif., nonprofit Wine Country Marines. Sgt. Maj. Larry Leichty, one of the group’s board members, is one of the vanishing few. Liechty has had
A DISGRACED MARINE WHO CONNED HIS WAY TO THE TOP Entangled in a web of lies, a former Marine in Maricopa found himself ensnared in the sticky grip of stolen valor accusations. Like a black widow spinning artificial silk, his own web has become his prison. “This is fucking retarded,” Billy Zinnerman said in an interview. For Zinnerman — who falsely purports to be a retired sergeant major of the U.S. Marine Corps decorated with Velasquez described hunting down the bodies of Hussein’s dead sons, capturing Hussein himself, destroying an enemy tank in Iraq to save his comrades, eliminating Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and participating in the “Black Hawk Down” battle in Somalia. They were all lies. In direct response, President George W. Bush signed breakthrough legislation that made it a federal crime for anyone to falsely take credit for military valor. But Velasquez’s sullied legacy lives in on the Grand Canyon State through these three pitiful men and plenty more, cementing Arizona as the nation’s capital for stolen valor. Experts propose that, as one of the states with the most veterans and a prolific military history, the lies offer greater profit here than elsewhere.
Gilbert Velasquez, a phony war hero from Willcox, made the front page of the Arizona Range News Nov. 10, 2004, when he detailed his dramatic military exploits and styled himself as the homegrown hero of his little mountain town. He ingratiated reporters with a marble fragment supposedly from Saddam Hussein’s palace and a fabricated DD-214.
O STEAL VALOR IS TO ADORN ONESELF IN borrowed laurels of courage. It’s the product of either malice, cowardice or vanity, and generally misses its aim in each of these aspects. Because sooner or later, the carefully placed blocks of deception topple under the gravity of truth.
Such is the case with three Arizona men busted by American Veterans Magazine in the last year for exaggerating or outright fabricating their military service for various personal benefits — reputation, monetary greed and political power. The term “stolen valor” was coined by Vietnam veteran B.G. Burkett in his titular 1998 book. He busted so many people exaggerating and inventing their service records that he dubbed it “a national phenomenon, a weird ripple in the American psyche.” It was an Arizona man who singularly caused Congress to pass the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, making it a crime to wear unearned military medals.
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AMERICAN VETERANS Summer 2024
Summer 2024 AMERICAN VETERANS
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