A professional conman was given a 14-year sentence by a New York City judge on Monday. Jeremy Wilson was found guilty of posing as a wounded US Army veteran to lease a high-end apartment and a luxury BMW car.
43-year-old Jeremy Wilson claimed to be a US Army veteran with two Purple Hearts, and a doctor with two Ph.D.s from MIT.
“I’ve spent pretty much my entire adult life running and hiding from myself, and running and hiding from what I have done,” the Wilso said.
“Of all the lies I’ve told other people, it’s the lies I’ve told myself that make living the hardest,” Wilson added, barely containing a smirk as he talked, according to the Post.
“Who are we to say what is true and what’s not true?” defense attorney Robert Briere told the court Monday. “Who are we to say what’s happened to him and what’s influenced his life?”
Briere claims Wilson is really the lovechild of late IRA leader Brian Keenan. He has filed motions asking that his client be referred to as “Jeremy Keenan” in court. The prosecution painted a much different portrait of Wilson, stating his life has been a life of crime, fraud and deception.
He allegedly forged military documents and checks in order to lease a $55,000 BMW X3 in Boston.
“He claims to have been in a kibbutz in Israel, to have been shot in the head in Africa,” Prosecutor Diego Diaz asserted. “He continues to perpetuate this fraud.”
Wilson’s record show he has had at least eight felony convictions in the past, with prosecutions for similar crimes across the United States.
“Jeremy Wilson posed as an airline executive, an MIT student, an Army veteran, and a member of an actors’ union,” Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance said in a statement following the sentencing. “Now the only uniform he will be wearing is a prison jumpsuit.”
He has “spent his entire adult life devoted to fraud,” said Diaz.
Wilson was arrested in January of last year, making headlines such as “Cops Nab International ‘Catch Me if You Can’ Scam Artist in NYC.” When police searched his apartment they found numerous fake passports, stolen IDs, military uniforms with Purple Hearts and Silver Stars, Harvard and MIT hats and coffee mugs, computers and cash.
During questioning in New York, police officials said Wilson boasted of being just like the scam artist portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio in the 2002 movie “Catch Me If You Can,” NBC reported in 2016.
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