[ISN] Phoney captain fools RAF base for five months

From: InfoSec News (isn@private)
Date: Fri Apr 23 2004 - 02:22:02 PDT

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    http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/23/nraf23.xml
    
    By Chris Boffey
    Filed: 23/04/2004
    
    When Kelsey McMillan arrived for duty at RAF Valley the soldiers
    guarding the airbase snapped a salute after taking note of her
    captain's uniform and checking her identity card.
     
    She told them she was a medical officer arriving for a retraining
    course and they pointed her in the direction of the duty adjutant and
    the officers' mess.
    
    For more than five months she was welcomed at the RAF base in
    Anglesey, north Wales, motto In Adversis Perfugium ("refuge in
    adversity") and showed her mettle on training missions in Sea King
    helicopters and in the hospital block, where she sat in on medical
    examinations.
    
    The 35-year-old was also popular in the officers' mess; always
    generous in the bar, even running up a £300 bill.
    
    But "Captain" McMillan sparked off a major security appraisal after it
    was discovered that she was an impostor with an obsession for
    uniforms; her only connection with the Armed Forces being as a private
    in the Territorial Army.
    
    Yesterday, the RAF admitted being duped. A spokesman said: "She
    presented herself very well and turned up in an impeccable captain's
    uniform and with Army identification. She was very plausible.
    
    "However, we have already taken steps to make sure that this does not
    happen again, not just at Valley but at all military bases across the
    UK. McMillan is, at the moment, still a member of the TA and is being
    investigated by military police."
    
    McMillan's five months of subterfuge began in October last year when
    she turned up at the main gate of RAF Valley claiming to be on
    detachment from the Army. She also said her fiancé lived on the
    airfield.
    
    She moved into the officers' mess, putting all her bills on credit and
    explaining that her Army pay had been delayed because of the transfer.  
    As a medic she was assigned to 22 Squadron's search and rescue unit
    and flew on training missions. She also sat in on examinations in the
    hospital block but did not administer treatment.
    
    McMillan was finally found out when, knowing that she might have
    stretched the limits of her credibility at RAF Valley, she applied for
    a transfer to the Royal Navy Air Station Culdrose, near Helston,
    Cornwall.
    
    Within four days of joining the base she was arrested by military
    police.
    
    The civilian police were called in and she was given a caution but no
    charges were brought.
    
    TA members can be subjected to court martial but it is understood that
    she will be spared that ordeal and at the end of the investigation
    will be thrown out of the military. She has already been stripped of
    her ID card.
    
    Her parents have settled the outstanding mess bill.
    
    
    
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