ARTHUR REX CRANE
http://ap.stripes.com/dynamic/stories/A/AS_AUSTRALIA_FAKE_POW?SITE=DCSAS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Dec 21, 4:57 AM EST


Australian man jailed for lying about being a POW
 

BRISBANE, Australia (AP) -- An elderly Australian man has been sentenced to four years in jail for lying about being a prisoner of war in order to claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in pension payments........
Fantastic 3 October 2009 news article from Australia on Arthur Rex Crane, age 83, supposedly one of Australia's youngest POW (held by the Japanese during WWII).
 
He lied.
 
http://www.theage.com.au/national/hero-to-zero-the-lies-of-a-pow-20091002-ggl2.html
 
Looks as if he was also drawing a pension.
 
He is still alive and admit getting caught with his lies...
 
What a disgrace...
 
Hero to zero: the lies of a 'POW'
LINTON BESSER

October 3, 2009

''The days dragged on, slowly, relentlessly. Solitary confinement was becoming unbearable, as was the daily sight of stretcher-borne bodies being carted unceremoniously along the corridor …''

Blood on the Rising Sun, John McGregor

THIS was life inside Outram Road Jail, a Singaporean punishment compound, during the Second World War. Cyril Gilbert, a survivor of the Burma-Thailand railway atrocities, calls it ''the worst jail there ever was''.

And it is where Gilbert's close friend, Rex Crane, has told family, friends and authorities he was incarcerated after being captured by the Japanese in May 1942.

Gilbert and many others believed that, at just 15, Crane was one of Australia's youngest POWs......
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/pow-chief-a-prisoner-of-his-own-lies-20091002-ggid.html

POW chief a prisoner of his own lies

EXCLUSIVE A supposed World War Two hero admits he is a liar and a fraud, reports Linton Besser.

Life was hell inside Outram Road Jail, a Singaporean punishment compound during the Second World War. It was ''the worst jail there ever was'', a survivor of the Burma-Thai railway, Cyril Gilbert, told the Herald.

And it is where Gilbert's close friend, Rex Crane, claims to have been incarcerated after he was captured by the Japanese in May 1942. At just 15 years of age, Gilbert and many others believed Crane had been one of Australia's youngest POWs. Crane, who is now 83 and has been on the highest-level service pension since 1988, is the federal president of the Ex-Prisoners of War Association of Australia.

And Arthur Rex Crane is a fraud......

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

No checks on fake PoW Arthur Crane's identity

John Wright

October 05, 2009 11:00pm

THE Brisbane man who posed as an ex-PoW and falsely received more than $400,000 in war service pensions spent years investigating pension claims for genuine PoWs, it has been revealed.

Arthur Rex Crane, 83, the Ex-PoW Association of Australia president under federal police investigation, had his own, false pension claims authorised with the aid of another high-ranking, Brisbane-based association member.

Cyril Gilbert, the association's national and Queensland secretary/treasurer and its long-time welfare officer, said yesterday he would have dealt with, and advocated, Mr Crane's PoW and war disability pension claims when they were lodged in Brisbane in the late 1980s......
http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/veterans-in-tears-over-fake-pow-20091005-givx.html

Veterans in tears over fake POW

JOSHUA HOEY
October 5, 2009 - 3:29PM

Queensland war veterans have been moved to tears by news the president of the Ex-Prisoner of War Association of Australia, Arthur 'Rex' Crane, is a fake.

It emerged last week that Mr Crane had never served in any military force, despite claiming $405,000 in Commonwealth payments since 1988.

RSL Queensland CEO Chris McHugh told brisbanetimes.com.au this morning he had been to the Ex-POW's association headquarters at Norman Park to talk with veterans after the revelation......

Angus Hohenboken | October 05, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

TWO former prisoners of war supported the story of alleged phony veteran Arthur Rex Crane when he approached the Department of Veterans Affairs seeking compensation for serving time in Singapore's Outram Road jail.

The 83-year-old Mr Crane, who until last week was federal president of the Prisoners of War Association of Australia, has been receiving the highest level of service pension since 1988 after claiming he was captured by the Japanese in May 1942.

While the federal government has referred his case to the Australian Federal Police for investigation, there is growing frustration with the authorities about a reluctance to pursue fraudulent veterans......
 
When the stories of an 'old war hero' won't wash
SIMON CATERSON
October 10, 2009

ONE day in 1906, William Voight, a shoemaker and ex-convict, spent his entire savings on a captain's uniform he saw in a shop window in Berlin. Dressed in his new costume, ''Captain'' Voight went to the small town of Kopernik, where he commandeered soldiers marching in the area and used them to take over the town centre.

Voight ordered the arrest of the mayor and the treasurer and arranged for all the municipal funds to be turned over to him. He disappeared with the money but was caught soon afterwards. Subsequently convicted of fraud and theft, Voight had his sentence reduced by the German kaiser, who was amused by the deception.

Far from amused this week were family and colleagues of Brisbane war hero, beloved family man and respected community leader Rex Crane. The president of the Ex-Prisoners of War Association of Australia, Crane had claimed to have survived Singapore's notorious Outram Road Jail and the Thai-Burma Railway......

Exposed PoW scammer may be relieved

JOSHUA HOEY
October 6, 2009

Rex Crane speaks at an anniversary service of the Ex POW Memorial in Ballarat, February 2009.

A scam artist who lied about being held hostage during World War II before going on to become president of the ex-PoW Association of Australia could feel relieved at being caught out, a psychology expert says.

Arthur 'Rex' Crane last week admitted to "living a lie" over claims he had been imprisoned in Singapore at the hands of the Japanese and sent to work on the Burma-Thai railway......

http://www.anzmi.net/info.html
MAX BLENKIN: Veterans enlist to weed out Walter Mitys

October 9th, 2009

SOME call them wannabes, others more politely describe them as Walter Mittys, a reference to the fictional character who imagined himself to be a dashing pilot or a life-saving surgeon.  

They are the people who pretend to be veterans, either embellishing a pedestrian service record or, as was the case with former Prisoner of War Association president Rex Crane, creating a wholly fictitious record of overseas service.
Oxygen thieves, vermin and blowflies is how one particular group of veterans regard these imposters, running their own investigations of frauds and posting the results on their website.
The aim is to name, shame and humiliate......
http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26182793-5012447,00.html

One fraudulent war
Article from: The Courier-Mail

Terry Sweetman

October 08, 2009 11:00pm

"EVERY man", wrote Samuel Johnson, "thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea."

Brisbane man Rex Crane thought so meanly of himself that he invented a bloody past and fell in with the battalions of military fantasists.

Crane, 83, claimed to have been a boy soldier behind the lines in Malaya in World War II and to have survived the Burma-Thailand Railway and a spell in Singapore's notorious Outram Road jail.

He lied to his family, he lied to his mates and, I guess, he lied to himself as he rose to become national president of the Ex-PoW Association of Australia.....