A man who said he was a three-star general and headed a Memorial Day Parade in Westchester County is being accused of deception.

According to documents obtained by the New Rochelle American Legion, Fermijon Marrero, who claimed to have been a prisoner in a Vietnamese camp for eight months during the Vietnam War, is actually a Manhattan man who never even served in Vietnam and was discharged from the U.S. Army as a private after a few months in the mid-1970s.

"This is truly a betrayal of the most sacred national heroes that we have," says Ron Tocci, a former state Assemblyman and one-time head of the New York Commission for Veterans' Affairs.

Efforts to reach Marrero were unsuccessful.