On November 17 Wildfire Today covered the conviction of a Bitterroot Valley, Montana resident, Jay M. Gasvoda, for making false statements to a federal agency. He is a fire contractor who lied about the results of the physical fitness test (pack test).
Now there is news about David Monington of Miles City, Montana being…
…indicted last week in federal court in Rapid City, SD on two counts of mail fraud and one count of wire fraud.
The indictment alleges he forged about 14 signatures of South Dakota firefighting officials in an attempt to gain certification from the National Wildfire Suppression Association. The documents fraudulently attest to his training and experience as a firefighter.
“A number of the printed names and signatures of certifying officials were misspelled, while others were followed by incorrect listings of the certifying officials’ titles,” the indictment states.
Monington also was arrested in Miles City late last year on theft charges related to his fire business.
Of course he is indicted, and not yet convicted. But he misspelled names and screwed up the titles of people on the documents? Imagine how this turkey would perform as a fire instructor!
I love stories about Stupid Criminals.
Reminds me of the time…(yes…. a war story!)… that I encountered one. I used to work at a park where we used pagers to summon firefighter-trained park rangers to help out with 2nd alarm vegetation fires. One of the rangers had her purse with her pager stolen out of her car. We reported it to the park law enforcement rangers and the police, but nothing happened for about a week.
So I took matters into my own hands. I sent a page with my phone number to the stolen pager. When the Stupid Criminal called a few minutes later I then had their phone number recorded on my caller ID. After I gave the phone number to the law enforcement officers, they went to the residence attached to that phone number and recovered the pager along with some other stolen items.
Case closed. Stupid Criminal went to jail.
source: Argus Leader