Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times
Jeremy Wilson
It turns out that the notorious serial impostor Jeremy Wilson—if by some chance that’s his real name—brought his rolling con show to Montana.
The New York Times interviewed Wilson in jail, and even in cold type the man’s skills as a charmingly relentless fabricator are almost palpable. Here’s a pocket description of some of his activities:
“He has portrayed himself as a Scottish-born D.J., a Cambridge-trained thespian, a Special Forces officer and a professor at M.I.T. He has posed as executives from Microsoft, British Airways and Apple, always with a military background. He pretended to be a soldier seeking asylum in Canada to escape anti-Semitic attacks in the United States. He once maintained an Irish accent so well and for so long that his cellmate in an Indiana jail was convinced that he was an Irish mobster.”
And here’s part of what the New York Times reported about Wilson’s activities in Montana:
“Mr. Wilson also visited Fort Harrison, a Montana National Guard training site, in late August and tried to get a military ID card and body armor, telling officers there that he was a captain in the Special Forces on a secret mission, investigators said. One officer who spoke to him became suspicious and called the F.B.I., which put out an alert.
“Not long after that, he was arrested as he tried to enter Malmstrom Air Force Base near Great Falls with Ms. Venado. An alert guard discovered that the car was stolen. When F.B.I. agents interviewed him at the Cascade County jail in Great Falls, Mr. Wilson stayed in character. ‘He goes through the whole spiel about how he’s in the Fifth Special Forces Group,’ Special Agent Ernesto L. Negron said.”
He’s a hell of a character and the story’s a hell of a read.
