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In early 1990 or so teammate Darryl Young started busting phony SEALs and put up a handful of pages listing the names of these men. After several years he stopped updating the pages because there were SO many he could not keep up. By the late 1990's the team had grown to include several teammates and Ty Zellers inherited the web pages. He had them up and down over time and in late 1999 asked someone to host and maintain those pages. Constant moving from "free" hosting sites finally forced the registration of the domain cyberseals.org which consisted of memorials, links and - the Wall of Shame (Darryl's original pages) Over the years names were added to the Wall of Shame as phonies were busted. In 2001, the decision was made to break the Wall of Shame out into a site of it's own and AuthentiSEAL was born. For the last 4 years we continued to authenticate claims of SEAL and posted names to the pages - only when there was proof of that person having made the claim. In April 2005 - we took down ALL the Wall of Shame pages. It had become impossible to keep up with all the new names and we were losing track of some of our original sources. Within weeks, we started getting reports from names that had been exposed years before - proof that old phonies never die - or tell the truth. In September 2005, Our Director decided to take some time and travel. AuthentiSEAL has had a long and successful run, and ultimately been responsible for publicly exposing THOUSANDS of SEAL imposters… but now the time has come to end our crusade. Several recent changes in our personal lives now make it necessary for us to end our efforts. Several of our investigators have experienced personal or medical problems which significantly reduced the amount of time they can apply to this work. The webmaster’s job activities greatly reduced the available time to dedicate to maintaining this site. With our Director traveling, he is unavailable to us in the way we needed him to be. Donations have barely been enough this year to cover the cost of hosting this site, much less the cost to maintain this site. Perhaps the biggest factor in our decision to close down is the feeling that we are fighting a losing battle. All too often we have received inquiries from people requesting a SEAL verification, only to be confronted by their anger and disbelief when we inform them that the man in question is an imposter. All too often we have sent replies to people who DO believe our findings, but who then angrily insist that we aggressively pursue the imposter while they stand aside and do nothing. The simple fact that while it IS illegal to wear awards, medals, badges, pins, and unearned or unauthorized military insignia, there simply aren't any actual legal laws on the books that make it a crime to make false verbal claims of being a SEAL; as long as there are uninformed people who will believe their lies, there will be liars taking advantage of them. Combined together, these factors have caused us to rethink our position on keeping this site going. Some day we hope making such false claims will be illegal - and if that becomes a reality, we may be back. But for now it’s a losing battle with the odds hopelessly stacked against us – every SEAL imposter we’ve exposed has been replaced by three to six more just like him. At our last estimation, based upon the number of imposters reported to us compared to the number of real SEALs reported to us, the imposters outnumber the real SEALs more than 300 to 1. And sadly, with the rising respectability and admiration for our nation’s military forces, that number is growing rapidly. More and more men who somehow feel they don’t measure up are taking the “easy” way out and pathetically attempting to gain respect and admiration by concocting absurd claims of being veterans, instead of actually stepping forward and serving the nation in a legitimate military role. As long as the wannabes can find those who will believe their lies, and as long as there are no real repercussions for those lies, this problem will continue to worsen. We cannot hold back such a tidal wave under our current circumstances. There are other sites on the Internet that will help you
check on a SEAL claim. Please use one of the widely-available
search engines to assist you in locating them. We also urge
you to visit the web site of the POW Network (www.pownetwork.org).
That highly acclaimed organization has been involved in unmasking
all varieties of military imposters and phony POWs for more
than sixteen years, and works closely with federal authorities
and veterans’ organizations to ensure that the laws
of our land are upheld. Please note that while there have
been occasional interactions between that organization and
ours over the years, the POW Network is a stand-alone, federally-recognized,
not-for-profit organization which has no formal affiliation
with the AuthentiSEALs. If you want to uncover the validity of a claim please check our resources page where there are links to some organizations as well as a link to download the SF180 form needed to send for information yourself. Don't forget to read all about How to Spot a Phony and Reality Check for information that will help you decide if the claims don't ring true. If you want an in depth
understanding of what this team faces on a daily basis. The ludicrous claims
and phonies we dealt with, be sure to get the book by Steve
Robinson - one of the investigators: And finally - read this page for some real emails we received while providing this service and see what kept us going so long.
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