MONTEREY, Calif.- It's a story Central Coast News broke last week, now it's gaining national attention from the LA Times.
Wednesday, a special forces group said it spent the past year tracking Bill Hillar.
Central Coast News learned what the group found out, when it looked into the man, claiming to be a Green Beret.
"We don't go after the people that tell somebody at a bar 'I'm a Green Beret,' we go after people like Hillar that make themselves public figures," said Jeff Hinton.
And go after Hillar, the retired Green Berets did.
"...Expose these people for the frauds they are so they're not using our title and our reputation, a title we earned and a reputation we paid for in blood," said Hinton.
They aren't out for blood like some may think. Hinton said it's all about doing their homework on potential frauds like Hillar and letting the truth be known.
"You got to remember how small we are and to not know a colonel with special forces? No one knew him."
"The nail in the coffin was the Freedom of Information Act from Army operations Command...I mean this is a Full Bird Colonel and no record on him? It's like that's it!"
Hillar has been posted as a fraud for over a year on the website Jeff Hinton started, professional soldiers.com. A place for special forces to network with each other. It was there that Brian Hubbs and the other students at the Monterey Institute of International Studies found more evidence to back up their research on Hillar.
A client list from Hillar's now defunct website shows a lot of people believed his stories for a long time, "It's because he's never run across a real Green Beret... They read just enough or watch just enough movies to pass themselves off," said Hinton.
The question is, where is he now? "You got me! He's probably hiding under a rock...if I were him I'd leave the country," said Hinton laughing.
