Folks: this forum piqued my interest regard to determining the possible source of illicit or contraband MoH's. I found this at Medal of Honor.com (emphasis at the end is mine):

Congressional Medal of Honor - Improper Recipients

A good example of an improper award of the Medal of Honor on a wholesale basis occurred when the medal was issued to members of the 27th Maine Infantry Regiment. The 27th Maine was a nine-months regiment, organized at Portland on September 30, 1862. Almost its entire service was garrison duty in the defense of Washington City.
 
On June 26, 1863, with only four days of their enlistment left, the members of the regiment were ordered to leave their position and prepare to be mustered out of the service. This was at the same time that General Lee was leaving Virginia for the North and the Battle of Gettysburg.
 
All of the Union forces that could be spared were sent to General Meade, and this left the defense of Washington rather bare. President Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton appealed to the 25th and the 27th Maine to extend their service to see the Capitol through the emergency.
 
The men of the 25th refused and walked off to a man. The 27th, after an appeal by their commander Colonel Mark Wentworth , did a little better. About 300 stepped forward and volunteered to remain.
 
Stanton was overjoyed, and on June 29, directed that every man who had volunteered to remain be issued the Medal of Honor. The wording of his order was such that it could apply to anyone who volunteered to defend the Capitol after their service had expired.
 
Only four days of service were performed by the 27th Maine, and the unit played no role in the Battle of Gettysburg
 
 The echoes of Stanton's order or promise, however, could be heard from Washington to Maine. No accurate listing of the volunteers had been made, and due to a bureaucratic mix-up, an order was issued resulting in all 864 men of the 27th Maine being entitled to get the Medal of Honor.
 
By then the men had all returned to civilian life, so the Medals were sent to the Governor of Maine in January, 1865 for distribution.
 
The Governor called on Colonel Wentworth for help. Wentworth had continued to serve with another Maine regiment and fought through some heavy battles with General Grant to the end of the war. He knew what heroism was all about and knew not one member of his new regiment earned the Medal of Honor.
 
One can imagine how he felt about the men of the 27th Maine. He decided that he would try and follow Stanton's intent and gave the medals only to those who had volunteered to remain.
 
He stored the remaining medals, some 560, in his barn.
 
Later this word got to some who had not been issued the medal, and they broke into the barn and took many of the medals.
 
Later, after Wentworth's death, those remaining disappeared entirely.

Carry on.

CPT(VT) W.P. Sullivan
HQ Company - Asst G-3
Camp Johnson, VT

___‹(•¿•)›____
Kilroy was here

A year ago a local funeral director called Camp Johnson to determine where he might "borrow a MoH" for a memorial service. Seems his son told him his father "won" the MoH in Korea. Turns out the father actually was awarded a Bronze Star.

From the National Funeral Directors Association website http://www.nfda.org/pubs/oct98/index.html :

The U.S. Medal of Honor is the nation's highest award for valor in the U.S. military, symbolizing the bravery, valor and heroism of the U.S. veterans who receive it.
 
Unfortunately, there are more who are credited for the award than those who actually receive it.
 
Along with impostors that claim they received the award for their time in the service, family members sometimes mistakenly publish that a decedent was a Medal of Honor recipient in the obituary, knowing that they received an award, but unaware of which one.

Impersonating a U.S. Medal of Honor recipients is not taken lightly. Such an offense can by punishable by up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
 
Safeguarding a Medal's Honor: What funeral directors should know when servicing the families of veterans. written by Chris Raymond, explains the award's criteria, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society's role in preserving the integrity of the award and how funeral directors can prevent the award from being misrepresented. The article includes the heroic story of one Medal of Honor recipient and the case of a charlatan who claimed to be a recipient. The article includes a list of all of the current living Medal of Honor recipients.

CPT(VT) W.P. Sullivan
HQ Company - Asst G-3
Camp Johnson, VT

___‹(•¿•)›____
Kilroy was here

Hi all..
Thanks once again to Capt Sullivan. Once again the CMoH subject has a story to tell. The posts clearly show just how serious this is.
 
Tks.
 
++
 
Mike. I didnt see any link to your question, is this the Ebay item? I do have the very link here, but am not going to post it. At this stage I have no desire to hand overmore publicity to this particular person, or the item concerned. Having spoken to some of our Officer Committee, there remains doubt on exactly how those items were obtained, from a still living veteran - one of ours in the 305th BG. This particular incident is being investigated. So, I havent gone to the measures of linking in the Ebay item here. Appreciate it personally, and on behalf of the group, if no one does so either. Thanks.
 
Ian W

Ian White - 305th BGMA Hon. Life Associate, UK Contact and Organiser of next years 40th Combat Wing UK Reunion - May 21st-31st 2009

Ian,
 
I didn't wan't to post a link either so I downloaded an easily identifiable picture and used that instead, just wondering. I hope it dosen't belong to the Vetran you were refering to.
 
I watch for WWll Albums from North Africa since I found a picture containing my father ... He was incidental to the subject.
 
Mike

Yunch, you express yourself in such a hilarious and absolutely "right on" manner.   

All your posts on this thread so far I agree with 100%. I told an acquaintance, an Ebay-er in south Florida, that when his uncle passed (482nd and 389th BG) that if I saw anything on Ebay I'd have his *ss and not in a good way.

Some of the Ebay advertisement write-ups are unbelieveable. I was really aghast when a neighbor in north FL told me about "rented relative" photographs--practice of buying old antique looking framed photos to hang on one's wall and claim that they were relatives.

G. Combs
Niece
First Lieutenant Clay Byers
Navigator Bombardier Radar
1st September 1944
482nd BG (Pathfinder)
389th BG
466th BG

Major,
Rent a photo!!, WOW!!. I could make some big bucks there. Yes, those are among the items I inherited, and still packaged by movers umpteen years ago. I think I will pass tho. As to my posts, replys, etc. It's nice to hear someone sees some merit to them. I have Johns erector set, many metal toys, oy!, nine (9) dish pack boxes of Farnkopf antiques and mememtos. I still dont save any of my things. I still have my Navy uniforms blues/whites and medals. 

Fair Winds and following seas.
John, (GM 3/C USS Frost DE 144)

Kin to LT. John W. Farnkopf
15th AAF, 52 FG, 4th FS; Madna, Italy
MIA 11/11/44 remains found 12/8/53

Ian
I am a newcomer to this site and was trying to find out how to post on this site and happened to read your posting about the family selling history so flippently. I must say I am horrified every time I see this going on and only wish I had the money to buy it all... wait ... then I would put it on display in my museum here in England 389th Memorial Exhibition Museum we hate to see these people making out of lives given, to keep them free, but saying that I know of people who do buy items to keep and put in proper places not to make out of it but to help the old remember and the young learn we have done and hope this will become a more acceptable.
Pendora

Penny
389th Memorial Exhibition Museum

Hi Penny.
Applaud your efforts and that of the 389th. My concerns still are directed to the shady characters that ride on the back of well chosen words, as convinving as they always are to often vulnerable veterans. Having said that there are a number of collectors ad dare I say museum organisations that have some rather suspect practices. Then there are the horders, again some are high profile museum operations (Duxford are a classic case in point with their American Air Museum building). Boxes of donations somehow put aside, often mysteriously not seen again. In store, but not on show and not available?
The biggest mystery, in size alone, is the chnk of wall saved from Podington, the 92nd BG, donated to IWM Duxford. A huge mural of a B-17 in flight; magnificent pece of social history. Where is it? In the American Air Museum Building? ;last time I was there it as under a piece of plastic, resigned to a corner of the renovation hangar, several buildings away. Obviously not enough room for it and the section of Berlin wall they squeezed in!!! so, I think the whole history on Ebay and the wider picture is ver complex. And its not always the individual collector who is the fly in the ointment. It can be the big corporate operations that can be equally at fault.

Anyway, no aspursions cast upon the 389th!!! I 'm sure you have the best intentions towards your ow group in all situations.

Regards Ian

Ian White - 305th BGMA Hon. Life Associate, UK Contact and Organiser of next years 40th Combat Wing UK Reunion - May 21st-31st 2009

Sometimed the seller is not an actual "family member" despite their claims.

There are those who buy-out the contents of homes and apartments of elderly folks, and then purport "provenance" - citing family ties to the relics which they discover when they ransack the contents they purchased.

I know this to be more common that you might think. For a while, one division of our family business (son & daughters) performed "caretaker services" of such homes. We were hired to inventory & monitor the property while the estate was in probate, or while the resident was institutionalized and the family did not have the wherewithall to watch over the household.

Often the family closed-out the matter by accepting a bid for the remaining contents of the home from a buyer/dealer who was speculating on profiting from sale of vintage and collectible items inside.

As the caretake,  we monitored the transaction, and often later witnessed  the "scavenger" claiming that the owner of the decoration, award, letters, uniforms, war souvenirs, mementos, etc. had been a family member which we knew was false. I rather recently saw a collectibles dealer we know had posted such items on eBay, purporting to be such a family member, when it was indeed part of the lot purchased from an estate of a stranger.

CPT(VT) W.P. Sullivan
HQ Company - Asst G-3
Camp Johnson, VT

___‹(•¿•)›____
Kilroy was here

I can not imagine just tossing these wonderful pieces of personal family history away, regardless of how much money they might bring. The most treasured item in my father's personal possessions that I got when he died was a box of patches, medals and clippings. I also got his Ike jacket with patches that he was wearing when he came home. I was able to put the medals back on it....and replace a couple that had been lost over time. For Christmas my wife had it boxed and sealed and now it hangs on the wall in our living room as a reminder of my father and the price he and others like him paid for the freedoms we enjoy (and take for granted) today. Since my father served initially in the AAF and later was assigned to infantry divisions he has a number of awards and patches that he could not wear on his jacket....my next project is to have those put in a shadow box as well. My instructions to my family is that they can never sell any of these things.....if they do not want them they have to donate them to a museum.

Roger Myers

Son of Sgt. William Myers (6/8/42 to 8/20/46) 
Illinois Reserve Militia, Co. H, 4th Regiment
Burtonwood Base, England
89th Infantry Div  
106th Div (Detach F, 6951 OH Guard Bn)
69th Amphibian Tractor Bn