On a holiday weekend honoring the nation’s veterans, there will be a number of imposters posing as veterans to obtain a little glory for themselves. Among them is Joseph Brian Cryer, 45, of Ocean City, a former candidate for city council who claimed to be an elite U.S. Navy SEAL and bragged online about having “77 confirmed kills” in 102 hours during a Libyan operation in 1986. To prove his bona fides, he showed a government ID card that shows him to be 100 percent disabled and a Navy commander.
But Cryer is a fraud, said Don Shipley, a retired SEAL from Chesapeake, Va., who makes it his business to expose fake ones. Shipley has access to a database of all the Navy SEALs since 1947. Since Navy SEAL Team 6 took out Osama bin Laden in a daring mission last month, he said he’s received about 50 requests each day to investigate people who claim to be SEALs.
