Jury convicts Minnesota man of faking Purple Heart, POW medals in 'stolen valor' scheme to steal VA benefits
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A federal jury on Friday convicted a Minnesota man of pretending to be a combat-wounded Marine and prisoner of war as part of an elaborate scheme to illegally obtain $146,287 in benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. After a week-long trial in St. Paul, jurors convicted Mikhail R. Wicker, also known as Michael Wicker, of wire and mail fraud, using a false military discharge certificate, and fraudulent use of military medals, a crime commonly known as “stolen valor.”
According to court documents, Wicker claimed to have been deployed to Iraq in 2005 with Lima Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment where he reported having been injured and captured as a prisoner of war.
In reality, Wicker, of Dilworth, was living in Michigan two decades ago and was never in the service. Social Security Administration records showed that he worked a series of short-term retail jobs after graduating from high school but “there is no indication he was ever paid a single paycheck from any branch of the military,” prosecutors wrote in a pre-trial filing.
During the time when Wicker, 39, claimed to have been taken as a prisoner of war, released and debriefed by the military, then given sniper training, he crashed his car into a ditch in Michigan. Court and police records show that in 2005 he pleaded guilty to failing to report an accident.
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At trial, bona fide Lima Company Marine veterans testified that Wicker never served with them.
Prosecutors said that Wicker’s scheme to defraud the VA was elaborate. At its heart was a counterfeit DD-214 discharge form that purported to show that he served on active duty from June 16, 2004 to January 3, 2006. On the document, Wicker also claimed to have received a Purple Heart for injuries sustained in battle as well as a Prisoner of War Medal and several other military decorations.
Wicker initially submitted the phony paperwork to the VA in early 2016 with an application for disability benefits. After VA staff were unable to find any record of his military service, they asked for additional documentation.
Months later, he submitted the counterfeit DD-214 a second time. He also added other phony documents including a certificate of honorable discharge, a Purple Heart certificate and a photo of himself that he claimed had been taken in Iraq. The VA approved his disability claim in September 2016. The following year, the department awarded him education benefits.
In an effort to make his fraud plausible, prosecutors said that Wicker joined a Marine Facebook group, where he sent messages to Lima Company veterans claiming to remember certain people and asking for details that he “forgot.” In 2020, Wicker tricked one of the group members into vouching for him in a letter to the VA, even though the veteran had no recollection of serving with Wicker.
Wicker’s scheme began to fall apart when he applied for an increase in disability benefits and wrote a letter of his own to the VA that listed purported details of his deployment and related injuries. That prompted staff to search multiple government databases for his records, which turned up nothing.
The agency terminated Wicker’s benefits in 2020, and a federal grand jury indicted him four years later.
Prosecutors did not seek pretrial detention for Wicker, who remains free until his sentencing hearing before U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan.
