Man who posed as Army general gets 6 months

RALEIGH, N.C. — Christian Desgroux, the Raleigh auto mechanic who posed as a U.S. Army general and piloted a helicopter to the SAS campus in Cary to impress a woman, received a six-month sentence in federal prison Tuesday, federal prosecutors said.

U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle handed down the sentence in Raleigh after Desgroux's guilty plea in June. The 58-year-old was also sentenced to a year of supervised release.

He had faced a maximum sentence of three years and a $250,000 fine.

In February, an agent with the Department of Homeland Security testified Desgroux took a helicopter to SAS headquarters in November, wearing a battle dress uniform and identifying himself as an Army general. He told security officers that he was picking up a female employee on orders of President Donald Trump.

While at the SAS campus in Cary, Desgroux told security officers that he had come to take the woman to a classified meeting at Fort Bragg, then flew away with her for approximately 30 minutes before returning to Cary, agent Tony Bell said.

When he later interviewed the employee, Bell testified, she said she assumed Desgroux, then 57, was trying to impress her and start a romantic relationship.

“She said they did nothing,” Bell said in February. “They flew around for 30 minutes. She had no idea he was flying a helicopter to pick her up.”

Bell testified that Desgroux had chartered the helicopter out of Charlotte and told the pilot he had authorization to land at SAS. When it touched down on the software company's soccer field, Bell said, Desgroux immediately jumped out wearing a uniform and combat patches and three stars, though he had never served in the U.S. Army.