JAG twists the lid off bottle cap conundrum

Published Aug. 31, 2010
By Tech. Sgt. Drew Nystrom
455th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan -- The premise is simple enough --

Instead of throwing away the cap to your empty water bottle, throw it into a collection bin where it will eventually be recycled into prosthetic limbs for disabled servicemembers.

Bottle cap collection points have popped up all over Bagram Airfield over the past month. From the dining facility and the gym, to the Pass and ID office and the BX they seem to be everywhere.

Considering the amount of water consumed on a daily basis here, the ease of this charitable action combined with the emotional attachment many folks here feel toward the intended recipients, there is no wonder thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of caps have been collected. Where do they go next? "Nowhere," according to Lt. Col. Thomas Rodrigues, the 455th Air Expeditionary Wing's Judge Advocate General.

The colonel said the entire premise is a hoax.

Rodrigues said he was intrigued by what he described as the "bottle cap collection phenomenon" and sought out the main point of contact for the cap drive. Collection points were easily located, but from there the trail always went cold.

"Not surprisingly, with every interview at each collection site, no one had an overall POC, knew who the actual beneficiary was, or what to do with the collected caps," Rodrigues said.

Each time the colonel was given a POC or lead, it turned out to be a red herring. Like a modern day Mike Hammer, he turned his investigation to the Web.

The attorney's research unveiled similar schemes dating as far back as 1998. In its earlier versions, the hoax's beneficiaries were chemotherapy patients. In another instance, the collected caps would go toward obtaining wheelchairs.

According to Chief Master Sgt. Jeffrey Cui, the command chief of the 455th AEW, rumors or hoaxes are part of military life and deployed life in particular.

"If you can think of a subject, Cui said, "there is some misinformation out there about it, whether intentional or not."

It seems only natural, given the environment here in Afghanistan, an active conflict and many cases of combat injury, for the thrust of this hoax to be aimed toward prosthetics for military members, according to Rodrigues.

"The subject of this ruse is, to be quite honest, irresistible," Rodrigues said. "You want to believe someone is collecting resources to get prosthetics into the hands of somebody who really needs them. In this case, it's your brothers and sisters-in-arms. It's the perfect recipe for hoaxing," he said.

Feeling he was about to break the fraud wide open, the colonel contacted the largest prosthetic limb manufacturer in the United States: Hanger Prosthetics and Orthotics, Inc., based in Austin, Texas.

According to the prosthetic company's public relations representative, military members in need of artificial limbs receive new, top-of-the-line prosthetics. Recycled bottle caps would never be used in their products.

Rodrigues said the company rep insisted it would never take donated or recycled material to manufacture artificial limbs.

So the bottle cap collection is a hoax. At least no one was hurt, right?

"You may say there is no harm," Rodrigues said. "We just threw a couple of caps in a box and they were collected up. But the people who actually went through the trouble to attempt to do something good may not go through that trouble again for a bonafide cause. So in that sense it is not an immediate effect, but a long-term effect. There are certainly plenty of charities that could use people pulling for their cause. It's important they have people willing to do it."

So how can you be sure the next charitable drive you participate in is credible?
Rodrigues said a couple of simple questions should be enough to evaluate whether or not a charity is valid.

The first question to ask is, "Who is the overall POC for this?"

If no POC is listed for it anywhere, a red flag should go up and you should question whether the drive is real.

The second question to ask is, "Who is the manufacturer or the person supposed to be handing out the good thing?"

If the company or person who is supposed to donate the benefit can't be identified, then that should be a clue something is amiss.

And if the company or person is identified, they should be contacted to verify the campaign is valid.

"Had that happened in this particular instance," Rodrigues said, "this drive would have failed all three questions."

According to Chief Cui, an even easier option is available to servicemembers:

"The easiest way to quell any rumor [or hoax]," Chief Cui said, "is to go straight to your chain-of-command. If they don't know, they will follow their chain until they find the correct answer."

The JAG doesn't think the bottle cap POCs around base were conspirators though.

"I don't fault the folks who were trying to help their comrades with this drive. I think they generally believed this was a real cause," Rodrigues said.

"But if they had done a little bit of homework and asked a couple of simple questions then the word of mouth that got this thing off the ground would have been shut off at the very early stages," he said.

Case closed.

Bottle caps hoax