America’s Got Talent: Tim Poe a Fraud?

By On 06/05/2012 · 41 Comments · In America's Got Talent

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Remember Tim Poe, the stuttering soldier from last night’s America’s Got Talent? He claimed he was hit in the ear with an RPG and sustained brain damage that caused him to stutter?

UPDATE: The Associated Press is reporting on the story. Read it Here.

“Sgt. Poe’s official military records do not indicate that he was injured by a grenade in combat while serving in Afghanistan in 2009, as he reports,” Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, a spokesman for the Minnesota National Guard, said in a statement.

Olson noted that Poe did not receive the Purple Heart, which is given to those who are injured in enemy combat. Poe didn’t claim he had received the award.

“We looked very closely at his record,” Olson said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. “We did not find something to substantiate what he said.”

An NBC spokeswoman said the network and Poe had no comment.

Reportedly some members of his unit are calling him a fraud. A military blogger, This Ain’t Hell, verified a “statement” from the Minnesota National Guard, that Tim served, but was not injured by a grenade nor was awarded a purple heart.  Check out the comments on this Facebook page. IDK.

STATEMENT FROM THE MINNESOTA NATIONAL GUARD

~~ Attributable to Lt. Col. Kevin Olson, Spokesman for the Minnesota National Guard ~~

Sgt. Timothy Michael Poe served in the Minnesota Army National Guard from Dec. 3, 2002 until May 26, 2011, and performed as a supply specialist.

His military records indicate that he served with the Minnesota National Guard in Kosovo from Oct. 10, 2007 until July 15, 2008, and was deployed to Afghanistan from July 28, 2009 to Aug. 30, 2009.

Sgt. Poe’s official military records do not indicate that he was injured by a grenade in combat while serving in Afghanistan in 2009, as he reports. The Minnesota National Guard can also confirm that he was not awarded the Purple Heart Medal for wounds sustained in combat.

If this story is true, there should be some sort of major statement from the military soon. If not, I’m calling this a rumor that got out of hand.

 
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  • Anonymous

    Didn’t believe opera guy either. NO ONE has ever heard him sing? Where did he learn to sing opera? Was he raised by/with the family in the audience? Too many unanswered questions.

  • Anonymous

    Why would someone try to fake this stuff???  I do not get that at all. eta: That’s so dumb.

  • Anonymous

    I do not get anyone trying to gain something on false pretenses.  That’s worth a big zero, imo. 

  • Anonymous

    He can’t be very bright if he didn’t think his story would be discredited.

    And lying about being injured in combat? Not cool. That’s disrespectful to all the people who actually have been killed or wounded serving their country.

  • Devin Harper

    You mean that I was moved by a phony? Tim Poe you had me rooting for you and I really really liked you. You have a lot of talent and thought you were great in your audition.

    But it appears that you lied about being injured in combat and IMO that is a no-no. To proclaim yourself as some sort of hero when you are not, and  when there are actual heroes out there actually dying and sustaining injuries beyond a stutter, is incredibily shameful and insulting. I really hope you were sincere, but if you are not, I want you off America’s Got Talent ASAP assuming you made it past the  Vegas rounds.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1552146216 Shair Shamsuddin

    So it concludes that he is a FRAUD!! 

    People have been skeptical about this show lately..For example, Jackie Evancho, The viewers think that she had lip-sync or mimic on her 1st live show. I think about Andrew never had a formal training is true. Singing is something when a person is naturally gifted, even he/she never really had a formal training. We heard it many, many, many singers said it on singing shows

  • Anonymous

     ”You mean that I was moved by a phony? Tim Poe you had me rooting for you
    and I really really liked you. You have a lot of talent and thought you
    were great in your audition.”

    It often seems as if con men/women *sound* more convincing than honest people telling similar stories, doesn’t it? Guess they manage to tell us what we want to hear in the way we want to hear it.

    Despicable that the show didn’t vet this particular tale or, if they did, that they first aired it and planned to refute it only after the fact or something. Wonder what they’ll do now.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Now it appears that Tim lied about not having sung before. 

    http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.299264553496482.66696.194891727267099&type=1

    ETA: Comments about Tim from his ex-wife:

    http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/talented_liar_dEG81EH8MkLd30jbOGfx8I

    Poe’s ex-wife, Kelly Ballard, said she has never heard her former spouse stutter like he did on the show.

    “There were no combat injuries,” said Ballard from her Texas home. “I think he developed a ‘feel sorry for me’ stutter.”
    …………
    He claimed that had he not been injured, he might never have discovered his singing voice. But Ballard said years earlier, he was the lead singer in a band called “Crawlspace.”

    Also, now a statement from AGT:

    Show producers said they first learned only yesterday that Poe had been lying.

    Poe could not be reached for comment yesterday.

    More comments from Poe’s ex-wife here:

    http://www.agtnews.com/exclusive-tim-poes-wife-says-he-is-a-deadbeat-cheater-and-abusive?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=exclusive-tim-poes-wife-says-he-is-a-deadbeat-cheater-and-abusive

    Kelly Ballard — an Air Force veteran — says Tim, 35, even got another woman pregnant while she was deployed for ten months to Iraq in 2003!

    “He ended up marrying her,” she tells AGTNews.com. “They got divorced in March of this year.”
    …………….
    “My son (Isaac) is 11,” she says. “He knows everything out of (Tim’s) mouth is a lie.”

    Ballard says she caught her husband cheating in 1991 and after that the relationship headed straight down hill. “I had him arrested in June 2002 for domestic violence. After that, he vanished to Minnesota. He didn’t help out with our son at all.”

    She also claims Poe has lied about his education.

    “The whole time I have known him, I have never known him to be enrolled in any college,” she tells us. “There is a possibility he may have an associates degree from before I met him. On his Facebook page he says he has a Masters degree in project management.”

    Oh, and that bit about how he never sang before a speech patholigist suggested it to help with the brain injury?

    B.S., she says: he was the lead singer of a band in Rochester, Minnesota for four years.

    So far, Poe has still declined to make any comments to the press.

  • steph6449

    From comments at that Stolen Valor site:

    You Served Radio got an exclusive interview with Poe tonight. He has admitted to lying about receiving a Bronze Star and Purple Heart. He also admitted to embellishing about the RPG incident, but still insists it happened. The entire show is well worth listening to, but Poe’s interview begins at about 105:51. 

    Timothy Poe gives an Interview….. around the 106 minute mark they interview him….

    around 115 min mark he admits he “embellished” his story and that there was innacurate information given because he wanted to be “cool”

    Link provided for the radio show.

    The interviewer says if Poe produces the documentation he claims he has, they will put it on the You Served Radio blog.

  • Anonymous

    Wow. Next we’ll find out that he’s actually a woman. Or a dog.

    Guess they don’t vet *anything* on AGT.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Thanks for posting that interview. Tim says that “it may not have happened exactly as I said”. Thanks, Tim. “Embellished” = “lying” = cool? Oh, sure. Tim is really trying to cover his ass in this interview and is still trying to manipulate his way out of admitting that he outright lied.

    “The interviewer says if Poe produces the documentation he claims he has, they will put it on the You Served Radio blog.”

    I’m not going to hold my breath that Tim comes up with that documentation.  ;)

    ETA: When asked about who Tim was with when he sustained his “percussion” injury who could vouch for him, Tim only talks about people that he told about his injury and is vague and evasive about who he was actually with who could corroborate his story.

  • fuzzywuzzy

    Now that AGT has publicly admitted that they were unaware that Tim had lied, the show has formally disavowed Tim, so he’s on his own.

  • http://www.etsy.com/shop/AdorablyHooked Gwen

    Disgusting.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_KZJY2DIO5QJOF5A4JLBDIZMLRM Jeremy G

    It’s a talent competition, not a morality competition.

  • Anonymous

    It is so sad how people jump to conclusion’s and believe what they see or read on the news. I watch American’s got talented and this young man had a noticeable gate in his walk and had noticeable speech impairment. He also only served about a month of his tour in Afghanistan. To come back to the states early he had to be injured. There is no way that his was faked. But not all injury’s that happen in a war zone are put in a personal record. It is more likely in his Medical Records. Also not everyone gets a purple heart if they are injured in a war zone. I know allot of men that have been injured in Vietnam and Irac and Afghanistan that have not received purple hearts. 

  • steph6449

    If you listen to the radio interview I posted, and that mj has linked in the newer thread, Poe admits that he misrepresented himself, at a military event, as having a Purple Heart and Bronze Star that he doesn’t hold.

    While I don’t disagree that there may be cases where some veteran is trying to get their military records updated or whatever, in this case the guy clearly seems to have fibbed / embroidered / exaggerated / lied his ass off, about the awards. Which doesn’t impress me much in accepting any of the rest of his story.

    He seems to have definitely given the impression of limping and stuttering on the tv show. The case seems to be why.

    As a former military officer, and still working in a military environment, also I can say pretty definitively that there are absolutely other reasons someone might be shipped home from an overseas deployment besides injuries taken under hostile fire. With not a few of those reasons being unfavorable to the individual involved.

    It feels to me as if that was what was going on here. But may be his ear infection was in all reality so debilitating and untreatable that he couldn’t make himself useful as a supply specialist to his unit. Doubtful. But possible, I suppose.

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