[/floatr]Courier Mail: 'Fake' PoW Arthur 'Rex' Crane collected $400,000
OUTRAGED ex-PoWs are demanding to know how the Brisbane-based president of their national association, who has been exposed as a fraud, was able to falsely claim hundreds of thousands of dollars in service pension payments. Arthur "Rex" Crane, 83, the national president of the Ex-PoW Association of Australia, claimed for years he fought the Japanese in Malaya in World War II, was imprisoned in Singapore and survived the notorious Thailand-Burma Railway. On the strength of that story, Mr Crane is understood to have been paid more than $400,000 by the Commonwealth since 1988, but now it has been revealed he was living a lie. The Australian Federal Police is investigating claims Mr Crane was at school in Adelaide during the time he was supposed to have been in Malaya, was not sent to the Thailand-Burma Railway and never saw war service. He reportedly told a Sydney newspaper: "It looks like the past has caught up, doesn't it? I am going to have to resign from everything. And then I'm buggered if I know what's going to happen from now on"...more...
