Blake Hall
Bill Oliver is many things–an Army vet, a jujitsu instructor, a local businessman. But despite his own claims for the last couple decades, he is not a former Army Ranger.
According to military documents, Oliver served three years active duty with the Army as a carpentry and masonry specialist, but he never saw a lick of combat or received any special training, let alone attempted the infamous Army Ranger school. Oliver’s Facebook profile or website bio told a different story. His public online presence was riddled with references to his nonexistent special operations training, and he even discussed his alleged Ranger experience in several interviews with local news outlets.
In one interview, Oliver explains why the Army should keep the iconic black beret exclusive to the Rangers.
“It devalues, symbolically, what the Rangers stand for,” Oliver told the reporter. “Rangers have done something extraordinary and are different.”
How about that irony.
Oliver’s storytelling skills didn’t fool Guardians of Valor, a national organization dedicated to exposing frauds posing as military members. The organization spent six months unraveling Oliver’s claims and collecting evidence against him, including the above screenshot. Their article on Oliver’s 15 year long con is incredibly thorough and worth the read.
When Oliver found out that Guardians of Valor was investigating him, the Army vet was suspiciously eager to come clean to the local media.
Oliver immediately went into apology mode, admitting it was all a lie. He told us he would post a public apology to his FB page, which he did do and is posted below. Before we could finish the article and get it posted, we got a call from a reporter form WINK news out of Fort Meyers, Florida telling us Bill had come to them to do an interview and publicly apologize on air. The thing is, why did he keep the lies up for so many years, why did he wait until now to apologize for lying and misleading people? We believe it is because he knew we were outing him and he was trying again to garner the sympathy of the public before the article posted.