[ISN] Phoney captain fools RAF base for five months

[InfoSec News]

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.