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Phony Major Investigated in Recruiting Fraud Case : Military: Oxnard man is accused of soliciting sign-ups for a non-existent Army group. Members say they were duped.

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TIMES STAFF WRITER

U.S. postal inspectors said Friday that they are investigating mail fraud allegations against “Major” Keven R. Empey, the leader of a phony Army auxiliary unit who was arrested at the U.S. Naval Construction Battalion Center last week on suspicion of impersonating an officer.

The U.S. Postal Service believes that Empey may have fraudulently recruited people by mail to join the “U.S. Army Auxiliary Forces,” said Postal Inspector Donald Obritch, who called the group “a bogus military service.”

Also Friday, military officials said that Empey, of Oxnard, never served in the Army, and that his group did not have the Pentagon’s approval to augment the armed services.

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Empey, 34, who after his arrest took a leave of absence from his job in the quality control department of a Port Hueneme foundry, declined to comment Friday.

“It’s still under investigation,” Empey said. “I can’t comment at this time. I’m not trying to be rude; I’ve just been instructed not to.”

Last Saturday, Empey and nine other civilians in military uniforms were arrested on suspicion of using forged military credentials to get onto the Seabee base in Port Hueneme.

The 10 entered an empty classroom and spent three hours quietly studying infantry tactics and Army radio procedures from Korean War-era manuals. They might have finished their classes unnoticed, but a U.S. postal inspector, who recognized Empey from an investigative file, saw him in the base’s McDonald’s restaurant at lunchtime and notified security, base spokeswoman Connie Taylor said.

Security guards detained the 10, then cited them on suspicion of trespassing on a military installation, impersonating officers and unauthorized use of false military identification.

Trespassing charges will be dropped, but the 10, most of them former soldiers, still face the remaining charges, which carry a maximum penalty of 5 1/2 years in prison upon conviction, authorities said.

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“It was a good-faith move on my part, and it turned out to be something that was totally bogus,” said arrested member Richard Waite Sr., 57, of Oxnard, who said he served in the Army for a tour in Korea and two tours in Vietnam. “I certainly would never have joined an organization I had any qualms about, that would affect my status as a retired serviceman.”

“We’re innocent of this. We were duped,” said another Army veteran from Ventura, who asked not to be identified.

“It’s flabbergasting,” he said. “It’s a nightmare that we could be so suckered into something. It all seemed so legitimate and we really thought we were doing something to help this war effort, and to come to find out that the Army auxiliary doesn’t exist is really incredible.”

Postal inspectors began investigating Empey on suspicion of mail fraud last October, said Lt. Col. Dick Pierce, a spokesman for the California State Military Reserve. The CSMR triggered the investigation by giving the Postal Service leaflets that Empey had handed to one of its members at the Port Hueneme Air Show, Pierce said.

Empey joined the CSMR, a 700-member unarmed state militia that augments the California National Guard when its troops are called to active military duty, in 1984, Pierce said.

Empey applied using papers that identified him as a former auxiliary Burbank police officer and a reserve San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy, Pierce said. Burbank confirmed that he served from 1982 to 1985, but San Bernardino County officials said they had no record of his service.

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Reserve officials did not question the credentials until December, 1987, when Empey applied for a promotion using a military resume that Pierce said was “absolutely as phony as a three-dollar bill.”

It said Empey had held the rank of lieutenant colonel at age 18 in 1975 with a special operations unit during the fall of Vietnam, that he had earned the Purple Heart there and that he completed a paratrooper’s course in the Army of Spain--all false, Pierce said. CSMR denied him the promotion and he resigned, Pierce said.

“The world’s full of guys like that--wannabes” who work their way into military service without real training or credentials, Pierce said. “It just happens.”

But Empey had access to real military documents, authorities said. The ID cards he issued to the auxiliary forces were printed on Department of Defense blanks from 1952; the U.S. Army had published the military manuals that security guards confiscated during his arrest, and he used Defense Department memo forms to send briefing orders to his “troops.”

But the mailing address on the documents for “3rd Special Forces Group Command, U.S. Army Auxiliary Forces” is that of an Oxnard florist’s shop.

Many of those arrested last week said they began to wonder about Empey, who gave them inflated military ranks when they signed up. He had assigned himself the rank of major, group members said.

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But one former soldier, who became a brigadier general in Empey’s army, said the group looked legitimate and that its members were looking forward to taking over local duties for guardsmen sent overseas.

“I said, ‘OK, we’re gonna do some good here,’ ” the Santa Barbara man recalled. “And all of a sudden on Saturday, it wasn’t so good, it was very embarrassing.”

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