A “former CIA agent” who was frequently invited on Fox News to discuss national security matters, has been exposed as a fraud according to reports.
This Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Wayne Simmons with making false statements, wire fraud, and “major fraud against the U.S.” According to Gawker, Simmons was “actually just an extremely talented con man with a penchant for scamming Fox News producers and government contractors alike.”
Simmons, who also wrote a book that chronicled his supposed “27 years” in the CIA, was even able to use his false story to land government contracts abroad.
In 2008, Simmons was invited to train at a U.S. Army facility after gaining a position as a “Human Terrain System Team Leader” by making false statements. Amazingly, no one ran a background check on him.
From the Washington Post:
He won an interim security clearance for that job, prosecutors alleged, by “falsely stating that he had been recruited to the CIA in 1973, that he had not previously been charged with or convicted of a felony offense, that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had held a top secret security clearance from 1973 to 2000…
In that role, [prosecutors] said, he was actually deployed overseas as an adviser to senior U.S. military personnel.”
He also is accused of stealing a $125,000 investment” and using it for his own personal expenses.
Below is video of an appearance Simmons made on Fox & Friends in 2007:
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