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Zulu
In this episode of American Greed, Captain Daryl Wright has a purple heart
isn't afraid to show it.
Daryl used his purple heart, flaunted it, and he weaponized it.
As a wounded warrior, Wright collects more than $700 ,000 in government
until an undercover investigation unravels this hero's story.
99 .9 % of that stuff is not true. That did not happen.
I think he enjoyed getting free money.
We started to refer to this as the Purple Heart fraudster case.
Wright's victims are veterans who feel their sacrifices have been tarnished by
his lies.
Their valor has been stolen.
It's like a stab in the heart and then twisting it deeper. That's how it feels.
In 2005, the Iraq War is grinding on with no end in
sight.
Daryl Wright, then a lieutenant with the Idaho National Guard, is just one of
140 ,000 American troops serving here.
But he stands out.
First thing you notice when you meet Daryl Wright is how incredibly tall he
I mean, this guy's, I don't know how tall he is, but he's the tallest guy
ever met in the Army.
Wright's job is helping turn local Iraqis into a lean, mean fighting force.
Basic tasks, how to shoot a weapon, how to play grenades, how to do whatever.
I just started to teach them like a mini boot camp.
Brad Awney, Wright's first sergeant, works closely with him.
We got along great. You know, he was good with the troops. He was good with
staff. He was good with me.
You know, we used to give each other a hard time because he's a Seahawk fan and
I'm a Viking fan.
You know, that type of thing. And, you know, other than that, I mean, yeah, he
seemed like a fine officer at that point.
He was an intern with us, and as the internship was ending, he got deployed.
Kathleen Simcoe is Wright's former boss back in Boise, Idaho.
She and her co -workers are sorry to see the National Guardsman go, but they
know it's his duty, and they let Wright know he's in their thoughts.
Several times the group would chip in together and donate things for a care
package, and we sent him things like Twizzlers, and we sent him, I think, a
whole series of cheers, and he really appreciated it and shared things with
unit, and so I did. I kept in touch with him.
80s television and junk food can help fill long stretches of boredom. But
the lulls, there are flashes of danger.
The spring and summer of 2005 is one of the war's deadliest periods.
A time of runaway insurgents, roadside IEDs, and suicide bombings.
Iraq is kind of like Russian roulette, you know.
It's not if it's when you're going to be hit kind of thing. So there's always
going to be something to worry about, you know, every day.
On August 30th, 2005, Darryl Wright is standing next to Sergeant Awney,
At 1 .30 in the afternoon, the calm is pierced by a dreadful sound.
We hear the...
You know, the whistle whipped by us, and then there was a second one, you know,
shortly after, so it was like simultaneous almost.
And then, you know, boom, boom.
It's a rocket attack hitting their base.
Wright will later report that rubble and debris from the impact showered the sky
and rained down on him and the other troops.
He writes that he was violently thrown and knocked unconscious from the
percussion of the rocket's impact.
Wright says the rocket's wreck is Humvee, seen here immediately after the
attack.
But Wright is not hospitalized.
As Awney sees it, Wright suffers no obvious injuries.
And two months later, in October 2005, their unit returns home.
When Daryl came back and came to work with us, Daryl was still Daryl. In fact,
if anything, I think he was a little bit more outgoing.
Kathleen Simcoe, who comes from a long line of military veterans, sees no
apparent signs of post -traumatic stress in her friend.
She says Wright does not seem anxious or high -strung.
He fit into the team, was just wonderful. There was no performance
whatsoever, no concerns.
Nothing but positive accolades. I didn't see any change in him.
I didn't see any injuries, anything at all.
Darla McDaniel is Wright's former partner and the mother of his daughter.
She has a similar take.
After his time in Iraq, Wright seems, if anything, changed for the better.
He was trying.
He was doing what he could to be a part of our daughter's life and be a better
dad than what he had been in the past.
I mean, I always wanted our daughter to have a dad, obviously, to have that
presence in her life.
And it was nice that he was there for her.
By all appearances, Ride is thriving.
So much so that he decides to take a job in his hometown of Seattle, which has
more opportunities in his field of urban planning and economic development.
I remember distinctly what I said.
If I give Daryl a bad evaluation or reference, can I keep him?
Because I didn't want to lose him. He was great. He was doing great work. He
with our team.
And I just didn't want to have to hire a replacement because he did such a good
job and he was such a good fit.
Wright lands an $80 ,000 a year job, working for the Federal Department of
Economic Development in its Seattle office.
When I first met him, I thought he was personable.
He was easy to talk to.
He was friendly.
C .J. Jackson works with Wright in the Economic Development Office, where she
manages human resources.
Although she allows American Greed to use her real name, Jackson asks that we
obscure her face.
She says she is afraid of retaliation from Wright.
Jackson's experience working with Wright is very different than Kathleen
Simcoe's.
She says Wright takes more time off than anyone else in the office.
And over time, his absences only increase.
At some point,
I ran into him in the hallway and, I mean, I haven't seen him in a while.
And so I said, oh, hey, stranger, how are you? I didn't know you still worked
here.
Jackson says Wright blames his absences from work on a variety of physical
injuries and mental impairments stemming from his service in Iraq.
He himself disclosed a lot of the things that he was suffering from.
to anybody who would listen.
Ultimately, he got to a point where he says that he can't work.
He can't even get up. He can't get out of bed.
He's afraid of crowds, that he can't get on public transportation.
Eventually, Darryl Wright takes so much paid time off from the federal
government that any additional time he takes off must be unpaid.
But Wright concocts a clever way to get the time off and still collect a
paycheck.
He submits paperwork saying his National Guard unit has called him up on an
emergency order.
He must answer the call of duty.
But the emergency order doesn't look right to CJ Jackson.
I could tell well enough that...
A military order that was dated six months prior to deployment could
considered emergency.
That was when things started being questionable to me.
Jackson drives down to Tacoma to visit Wright's National Guard unit at Camp
Murray. She asks an officer about the order Wright has submitted.
He came out and he said, well, this is...
Embarrassing because we don't have copies of these documents in our files.
And with good reason. The order is bogus.
He cut and pasted. Basically, that's what he did. Cut and pasted military
orders.
Up next, Daryl Wright applies for and receives one of the nation's highest
honors for wounded warriors.
But C .J. Jackson learns what can happen when you blow the whistle on a purple
heart.
And at first I didn't believe that, because I was saying, well, this guy
falsified documents.
Why am I the one in trouble?
In Seattle, Iraq veteran Delroy Wright has forged paperwork allowing him to
work and still get paid.
It's a brazen fraud, according to Assistant U .S. Attorney David Jennings.
It is a serious crime, and I remember when it came in that I walked down the
hall and talked to a couple of people who had served in the military and asked
them just how outrageous it was to fabricate orders, whether it happened
time or something that would...
deadly serious, and they all confirmed it was serious.
Nobody does that.
The Department of Defense begins to cut ties with Daryl Wright.
They confirmed that he has committed fraud, and that would end his career in
military.
Since Wright has no future in the military, he goes to work rewriting his
First, he applies for and receives
The Combat Action Badge. It's a relatively new award established in 2005
honor service during active enemy fire.
Then, Wright applies for one of the most prestigious U .S. military honors, the
Purple Heart, which is reserved for those injured or killed on the
They earn that. I mean, that's one of those medals you don't want, but you
happen to get it just depending on the situation you're in.
And it's held in high regard because that is a sacrifice that you've given to
your country. You've given a part of yourself or you've left blood on the
battlefield or whatever.
That's held in high esteem.
A doctor diagnoses Wright with traumatic brain injury.
Suffered during that rocket attack on August 30, 2005.
The injury paves the way for Wright being awarded the Purple Heart on March
2011.
He was a proud Purple Heart recipient.
He had it displayed prominently in his home. He would show it to people. He
would mention it to people. I think most people in this country would say that's
kind of an exalted position in our society, as it should be.
And I think he liked getting that attention.
He went so far as having Purple Heart license plates on his vehicles.
So he was clearly somebody that was proud to have people see that and
the fact that he has a Purple Heart and was awarded a Purple Heart.
But at work, things aren't going well for Wright.
The Inspector General of the Commerce Department following up on Jackson's
Begins investigating Wright for forging the military order.
But Wright isn't about to go quietly.
Somebody from the union actually contacted me and said, Hey, C .J., you
keep your eye out because this guy is filing a complaint against you.
Wright hires a lawyer and claims that C .J. Jackson is harassing him.
and discriminating against him because he's a wounded warrior.
So he deflected the attention away from him.
And then zeroed in on me.
And at first I didn't believe that, because I was saying, well, this guy
falsified documents.
Why am I the one in trouble?
Jackson says she has the support of her immediate superiors.
But at Washington, D .C. headquarters, according to Jackson, it's a different
story.
My agency, because he's a disabled vet, they took his story over mine.
Jackson runs up nearly $30 ,000 in legal fees.
She loses sleep, becomes anxious and depressed.
At one point...
The agency recommends Jackson be suspended for 30 days for allegedly
rights privacy by disclosing to the National Guard that he suffers from post
-traumatic stress disorder.
I was way out in left field all by myself and spending money on
legal fees out of my own pocket.
I thought I was protecting the interests of the government.
For crying out loud, this guy was falsifying documents so that he couldn't
paid.
After six years of strife, the case is resolved.
Wright obtains a severance from commerce that includes disability payments.
Jackson keeps her job, but not without a psychological toll.
I go to bed every night and say, why?
What did I do wrong?
When I wasn't the one falsifying documents, why was I the one on the run
one fighting for my job?
The power that he wielded as a wounded veteran, a decorated veteran, made his
word gospel.
That was at least until Joe Rogers got on the case.
Next on American Greed.
A dogged investigator uncovers the tale of two Daryls.
My job is to keep digging.
And I get paid to not go away.
In downtown Seattle...
Joe Rogers is a special agent with the Inspector General for the Social
Administration.
His job is to root out fraud, waste, and abuse in disability claims.
We get a lot of allegations of people that either don't disclose to Social
Security that they're working or they're over -embellishing their disability or
they're faking their disability altogether.
So those are the types of things that we investigate.
Agent Rogers gets a tip.
There may be something suspicious in the file of Daryl Lee Wright.
Ms. Wright first filed in 2010, and he told Social Security that his
disabilities were pretty severe, that he couldn't get out of bed several days a
week, he had trouble walking, he used a cane, he couldn't feed himself, he
couldn't tie his shoes, he couldn't manage his belt, button his pants.
Those are claims of somebody that's very seriously disabled.
One fact jumps out.
When Wright files this claim in 2010, he is still working for, or at least on
the payroll of, the Department of Commerce.
To investigators, his disability claim seems inconsistent with holding down an
$80 ,000 a year federal job.
He was so disabled from his PTSD and traumatic brain injury that he couldn't
anything.
and couldn't think for a period of time of more than five seconds.
Reading the file, Agent Rogers sees how Wright presents himself to the
government.
Now he wants to see for himself.
We're in Snoqualmie, Washington, and we're up in Snoqualmie Ridge, which is
residential part of Snoqualmie. It's a newer part of the town, and most people
live here.
kind of in the Bellevue, Seattle area, because it's a great place to raise a
family. There's schools and things in the neighborhoods, a lot of kids.
And this is the street that Mr. Wright lives on.
In fact, his house is right across the street here, the blue house with the
white trim.
So I came out here to see if I could observe him, and if I observed him, how
really functions. He also told Social Security to use a cane.
I expected to see somebody that, if I did see him, he'd be out here in a
awful state using a cane.
Rogers notes that Daryl Wright, seen here in surveillance video taken by
investigators, mows the lawn, does yard work, and comes and goes from his house
on a regular basis.
He never used a cane. He certainly didn't move with any sort of hesitation
appear to be certainly disabled or disabled at all for that matter, but
certainly not as disabled as was represented in Social Security in the
paperwork.
Talking to people in Snoqualmie, Rogers learns Wright is a member of Rotary.
He belongs to the country club, and he serves on the local planning commission.
Well, it was a tale of two Daryls.
We learned that nearly everyone spoke highly of him, talked about his
intelligence, talked about his ability.
And so, you know, that was completely different from the Daryl Wright that was
being represented in all of his applications for benefits.
And our daughter enjoyed spending time with him.
Wright's former partner, Darla McDaniel, shares custody of her daughter with
Daryl Wright.
Though Wright tells the government he can't operate a car, he drives alone for
seven hours straight to Boise, at least once a month to spend a few days with
his daughter.
She adored him because he was kind of the fun dad.
He was able to just do all the fun things with her.
Agent Rogers talks to some of Wright's friends, including James Rowe, a local
high school coach.
Rowe has been friends with Wright for 30 years, since the two played high school
basketball.
My neighbor called me and goes, looks like you got the FBI in your driveway.
I said, I do.
Rogers, working with an FBI agent, learns that Wright is an assistant
coach, touted in the team newsletter as D .L.
Stallion Wright.
He gets out on the court, too.
playing basketball with a group of friends on Monday nights.
After the games, Wright and Rowe go out for beers.
So when they came and asked me, does he need a cane to walk into the gym, I'm
thinking, well, this is a loaded question. These guys are just going to
I'm lying for him.
Because obviously if he's playing basketball, he's not walking into the
a cane.
Then they said, when you guys go next door and eat pizza and drink beer, does
someone have to feed him?
And I'm like... No, he can drink beer pretty well on his own, so there's no
over there feeding him.
Rowe says he and his buddy go to Mariners baseball games, camp with their
daughters, and fish and crab in the islands of Puget Sound.
But Rowe paints a slightly different picture of Daryl Wright than some other
sources.
While others say Wright comes back from Iraq more relaxed, Rowe interprets that
mellowness as...
Melancholy. Mopey and distant, and sometimes when he's not engaged in
conversation, it's like he's staring off into space, like there's something else
going on.
But, you know, it was definitely different when he came back.
And while Wright joins Rotary, serves on boards, and even plans to run for city
council in Snoqualmie, Rose's interview shows that Wright has a rougher side.
Once, on a guy's weekend in a mountain town, Wright and Rowe and several other
men are in a dive bar.
The bartender cuts Stallion Wright off and takes away his pitcher of beer.
The ensuing melee is captured on a security camera.
Dude coming after him, dude was big and thick, and he kind of got to take his
pitcher, and Stallion started beating him on the head with the pitcher, and
went to the ground, and the cook.
ran out from behind the kitchen and kicked him in the head.
And they got it all on film.
Eventually, Wright is hauled out, all six feet, ten inches of him, in a
fireman's carry.
Wright later sues the bar for allegedly inflaming his PTSD symptoms.
The case is settled with neither side accepting fault.
Up next, Daryl Wright goes to Disneyland.
and walks into a trap of his own design.
Now, I don't know if you've ever ridden Space Mountain Ride.
Not what you'd expect to be the favorite ride of somebody suffering from severe
PTSD.
In Snoqualmie, Washington, Iraq veteran Daryl Wright lives the dream.
And Uncle Sam foot the bill.
Special Agent Joe Rogers learns that Wright collects as much as $10 ,000 a
from five different federal and state agencies.
What became unusual in this case is the farther we kept going, the farther we
kept digging, that there was just more and more and more.
I think he liked not only the money, but the ability to have what amounted to a
very good salary, over $100 ,000 a year.
I think a good deal of that was probably tax -free as well, and not having to
work. But he could therefore devote his time to other things that he would
rather be doing, whether it be on the planning commission.
playing basketball, coaching basketball, driving to Idaho to see his daughter
once a month, whatever it might be. I mean, who wouldn't like that, right?
And all of Wright's applications for benefits lean on his status as a wounded
warrior.
Daryl used his Purple Heart, flaunted it, and he weaponized it. Any time he
could use it, any time he could bring it up, any time he could use that episode.
He did so to the point where we started to refer to this as the Purple Heart
Fraudster case.
In May of 2011, the VA launches a new caregiver program.
It's designed to help compensate family members of wounded warriors, some of
whom have had to quit jobs in order to be full -time caregivers.
Wright sees an opportunity.
He enrolls his sister.
Karen Wright in the program.
And she collects a little more than $2 ,000 every month.
She and Wright tell the government she's at his home around the clock, feeding,
bathing, and clothing him.
When our VA personnel were trying to call the caregiver in order to set up an
appointment to come see Daryl, they often couldn't get a hold of the
You would think that a caregiver would be at the person's house.
I never saw anybody that came to the house to be his caregiver, and I never
his sister ever show up at the house in any of the time I surveilled out here.
Rogers decides to use a bit of subterfuge.
Hi, Gerald, how are you? Doing well.
An undercover agent approaches Wright, saying he's investigating a totally
unrelated crime.
You're a tall man.
I am.
The hidden camera shows Wright moving quite well.
And the undercover agent learns that Wright is actively supporting his
girlfriend's political ambitions.
She's running for city council and treasurer for her campaign and helping
Oh, wow. You are? Yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah.
What does that entail? Just going door to door. And we haven't started.
Next week will be the doorbell and campaign.
By March 19, 2014, Joe Rogers is ready to come out of the shadows and announce
his presence.
At 9 .30 a .m., he knocks on Wright's front door.
Wright's girlfriend answers and takes Rogers back to the master bedroom, where
he finds Wright in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin.
Over three hours,
Rogers asks several versions of one simple question.
How is Wright able to maintain such a vigorous, active schedule?
He just flat out wouldn't answer those questions, and the pieces of them he
would answer, it was very calculated in the sense, well, that was just at one
time, and after I did that, I wasn't able to function for days on end, and so
that's all I can answer that. But then when pressed, he would stop answering
question.
Assistant U .S. Attorney Gregory Gruber studies PTSD to see if there's any
possibility it could come and go as Wright describes.
And from everything I've heard from the experts we talked to, nurses, doctors,
psychologists, a severe case like what Daryl claimed to have would be very
inconsistent with some of the stuff that we saw him doing, that Joe Rogers found
him to be doing.
Perhaps no example is as telling as Wright's trip to Disneyland with his
daughter. When we asked his daughter what her dad's favorite ride was at
Disneyland, she said Space Mountain.
Now, I don't know if you've ever ridden a Space Mountain ride, and it's been a
long time since I've been on it, but I still remember it.
It was very dark. There's flashes of light. There's noise. There's sudden
movements. There's people screaming.
Not what you'd expect to be the favorite ride of somebody suffering from severe
PTSD like Daryl said.
For Wright's former partner, Darla McDaniel, these trips stir up mixed
On the one hand, she's happy for her daughter.
But he tended to try and make me feel bad about it because I wasn't able.
to do those things with our daughter. I had a job.
I was working full -time and raising her and barely getting by.
And somehow, he wasn't working and able to
afford all these things.
I just remember so many people in my life asking me what he's doing. How is
living?
And I had no idea.
No. No way of figuring that out on my own.
But the feds do.
They create a detailed timeline which shows exactly where Daryl Wright and his
sister have been and what they've been up to.
From the records that we had recovered, which include bank records and travel
records and others, many times when the VA personnel were trying to set up an
appointment to come do a home visit, Daryl was in Boise, Idaho, and his
was at Walt Disney World. or he was on a cruise, and his sister wouldn't set up
an appointment because she knew either Daryl wasn't going to be there or she
couldn't be there.
So it was sort of a layer upon layer upon layer of lies.
Up next, the explosive truth about that rocket attack.
To see more from Agent Rogers' undercover operation, head over to
.CNBC .com.
Kirkuk, Iraq, August 30th, 2005.
Daryl Wright says a rocket attack on this day rattles his brain and
changes his life forever.
A couple of years ago, I got a call from a federal investigator out of Tacoma,
Washington, saying, do you know a Darryl Wright? And I'm like, yeah, he was
attached to us in Iraq.
And they're like, was he blown up and knocked unconscious on the Iraqi army
in 2005?
And I'm like, no.
Brad Aune remembers that day well, but not the way Wright remembers it.
I was standing right next to Darrell, and his reaction was the same as mine. I
was like, oh, crap, you know, kind of ducking in.
We just kind of like, you know, check it out, waiting for the, okay, is there
any more coming? All right, we're good.
And then I said, okay, Lieutenant, you call it in.
And then I just started checking on the troops. Everybody was cool. Everybody
was doing the same thing. We were kind of like, I wonder if there's more. Okay,
we're good.
Arnie says he and Wright, who are training Iraqi troops, Use the explosion
teaching moment, an opportunity to study the crater and calculate where the
rockets came from.
There was no debris. The debris field was 100 meters and away from us.
There was nothing. It was so non -eventful.
At that point, that was kind of not a big deal.
Unfortunately, that's kind of how you get used to something like that, you
The investigators discover that Wright actually puts in two applications for a
combat action badge.
Wright's first version, filed while he is still serving in Iraq, tells the
truth.
His original narrative statement said that, I think the quote is, luckily
was no casualties or property damage from that event.
He was denied a combat action badge for that.
So, according to investigators, when Daryl Wright gets back home, he decides
rewrite history.
He submitted a second one that described that he had been blown off of his feet
by the blast, which changed everything about it.
Jennings calls this Wright's foundational lie.
And it works. Wright receives the Combat Action Badge.
and then parlays that award into a purple heart.
Arnie learns that his signature was attached to Wright's false narrative.
I was furious.
And we really did a hell of a good job, as far as I'm concerned, while we were
in Iraq, and to have someone throw our good name under the bus and just start
creating all these documents with my name on them.
You know, 99 .9 % of that stuff is not true. That did not happen.
Other than that first paragraph on that report, that's pretty much the rest is
all made up.
One big lie concerns the photo Wright passes off as his wrecked Humvee.
Problem is, it's not his vehicle.
It's not even a National Guard Humvee.
It belongs to the Air Force.
Wright has apparently stolen another soldier's story.
Stolen their suffering.
Stolen their valor.
Someone was probably pretty hurt in that, so that's fairly shameful to use
vehicle and claim that whatever happened there was your own or build your own
story around it.
Putting himself in for a Purple Heart, doing all these things that are
the worst you could do when it comes to being a soldier.
to throw your brothers under the bus, to claim stolen valor. These kind of
things are the ones that just really piss me off.
Up next, Daryl Wright's Day of Reckoning.
They say karma's a bitch.
On January 29th, 2015, in the federal courthouse in Tacoma, Washington,
Darryl Lee Wright is arraigned on nine counts, including wire and mail fraud,
for allegedly stealing $737 ,000 worth of government benefits.
His sister, Karen Wright, is also indicted on one count of fraud.
Over three years of investigation, Prosecutor David Jennings keeps in mind
particular person affected by Wright.
C .J. Jackson, the woman who blew the whistle, only to experience a furious
backlash.
I can't speak for the others, but for me, the hell she had to go through gave
motivation to keep digging and to keep finding more to prove who Daryl Wright
really was.
to show that second Daryl Wright.
I think Mr. Wright was trying to create a new person for whatever
reason he wanted to be, this decorated war hero, military officer, and garner
the attention and automatic respect that comes from that. And I think he didn't
really want to work traditionally. I think he enjoyed getting free money.
And I think he just kind of wanted to do what he wanted to do and the way he
wanted to do it.
Darryl Wright pleads guilty to two counts of wire fraud.
His sister goes to trial, but the jury is unable to reach a verdict.
She eventually pleads guilty to one count of making a false statement.
Their fraud victimizes taxpayers, but also veterans who fear their true war
stories have been tainted.
Their real struggles somehow diminished.
And they worry their efforts to get benefits may now be harder.
And I always tell guys, you know, vets, you've got to be your own advocate.
And we've got some guys that are pretty good self -advocates in here.
Brad Awney, who served with Wright, now works full -time as a veteran's advocate
and employment counselor in Fargo, North Dakota.
For the most part, you'll get what you deserve or what you earn.
But you got to, sometimes you got to fight more. And you got to fight more.
squeaky wheel gets the grease. Yep.
And then that's right.
But then there's these guys in the way here.
Well, this isn't a squeaky wheel. This is a broken one.
Yeah, you get a broken wheel, like, you know, right, that screws it up for the
rest of us. And I made this point a couple times.
But that's the thing.
You know, he's going to.
It makes it harder for all the other guys that have stuff coming.
Throughout this case, we were careful to make sure that when we were prosecuting
Daryl Wright for his lies, that we were careful about making sure we didn't do
damage to all the progress that's been made in educating people about PTSD.
And all I can say to that is that Daryl Wright didn't fail to check a box off
or... misrecollect a doctor's appointment or something he lied
so the real heroes those who have been hurt those who are suffering from ptsd
they have nothing to worry about they went over there for us and i think we
forget that a lot and it makes it all the worse when somebody would
Fake injuries and fake conditions that other very brave men and women are
actually suffering from.
It's not just a crime anymore. It's just a tragedy.
In 2016, the U .S. government rescinds Wright's combat action badge.
And also his purple heart.
On June 1st, 2017, Wright is sentenced.
Kathleen Simcoe, his former friend and boss, is called by the prosecution to
testify. I kept saying, that can't be him, that can't be him. And then it was.
And I would see the evidence. It was like you want to be in denial until
irrefutable evidence and you can't deny it anymore.
And then I got angry. And I got angrier because I was so disappointed.
Simcoe testifies that Wright appeared uninjured when he came home from Iraq.
At one point, she is asked if she sees Wright in the courtroom and to point him
out.
And as I pointed him out, he waved his hand and did this little wave, and it
just made me want to vomit. It just was, he didn't have the decency to hang his
head. It was just childish and immature, and it was...
Just totally inappropriate.
My hero is the whistleblower in this situation.
Because as taxpayers, we're the ones that end up paying the freight when
like Daryl do the things that they do.
And so she deserves a medal.
C .J. Jackson reads for American Greed the statement she makes in open court,
which she explains how Wright retaliated against her for exposing his fraud.
Daryl Wright defamed my character.
What that man has put me through, no one should ever go through.
He made six years of my life a nightmare so that he can continue stealing,
lying, bullying, and manipulating people to get away with his crime.
Daryl Wright is sentenced to three years in federal prison.
in order to pay restitution of $646 ,000.
His sister, Karen Wright, is sentenced to three years of probation.
Both decline to speak with American Greed.
I'm glad he's in prison. I'm glad he's feeling some pain for this. I'm glad
gave him restitution.
Hopefully they'll be able to get some of that out of him.
He hurt his community by lying to them.
He hurt the National Guard in my unit because he brought us into his scam.
He hurt a lot of people along the way and he needs to feel some pain.
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