But McCauley, a Navy aviation ordnanceman, 21, liked the idea of being a Navy SEAL better. Though he never had qualified for even a single day of SEAL training, he told his mother and three brothers in Roseville that he was a rising member of the Navy's elite Sea-Air-Land special forces. And in doing so, he joined the growing number of people who publicly claim military status and valor that are not rightly theirs.

And so it was that, on Jan. 20, The Bee chronicled the family story of a Navy SEAL impostor. McCauley posed for family photos in a military jacket with a Navy SEAL patch on the breast, said he suffered slight shrapnel wounds while on the ground in Afghanistan, talked of a 9 &frac12-month SEAL training stint in San Diego.

This week, his family and The Bee learned the truth from a watchdog group of retired Navy SEALs and, subsequently, Navy officials at the Pentagon and on the Kitty Hawk itself:

McCauley is not a SEAL. The jacket patch is a fake. He was never on the ground in Afghanistan nor injured by a fragment grenade.

Reached at the home of his fiancée in Cleveland, where he was completing a month's leave, McCauley admitted that he fabricated many details of his military service to The Bee. In the same breath, however, he still claimed: "I wasn't in (SEAL) training for more than a week, but my mom didn't know that I had dropped training, and I didn't want to let her down. So I just kind of went along with it."

But the truth is that McCauley never entered SEAL training for any length of time, according to records kept by both the Naval Personnel Command and the Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) school in Coronado. McCauley has been assigned to the Kitty Hawk since April 2000, barely six months after he enlisted.

The repercussions for McCauley's deception could be dire. Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Gordon, spokesman for the U.S. Pacific Fleet headquarters at Pearl Harbor, refused to speculate on the full range of disciplinary possibilities, but confirmed that they could include administrative penalties on board the Kitty Hawk, or demotion in rank, or even a bad-conduct discharge from the Navy.

Gordon said the Kitty Hawk was conducting its own investigation and that the matter of discipline would be left to the carrier's commanding officer, Capt. Tom Hejl.

"When sailors misrepresent themselves, that's a disappointment to us all," Gordon said.

The revelations were a shocking blow to McCauley's mother and three younger brothers, who had earnestly told The Bee of the worries and pride that engulf the family of a Navy SEAL.

"We're very disappointed," said McCauley's mother, Maria Domingue, who added that she sobbed all day Tuesday when she learned the truth. "I would have accepted him even if he was a janitor on the Kitty Hawk. He was in the Navy. I was very proud of him. He didn't have to fabricate a story. It's hurt the family, and it's hurt his brothers."

Since being recalled from leave to the Kitty Hawk in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, McCauley had told his family about his special-operations ground raids in Afghanistan and of being struck by shrapnel from a "frag grenade" while in a ground conflict.

McCauley's tales reached a friend in Roseville, who contacted The Bee to tell the newspaper of the family. What resulted was a story with a picture of McCauley displaying his "SEALs jacket" while surrounded by his supportive family.

Retired SEALs across the country, however, have seen this kind of thing before. Members of an unofficial "authentication team" keep an updated database of every man who has ever graduated from BUD/S school, and nowhere on it could they find a Justin McCauley. By Monday morning, scores of alerting e-mails were pouring into The Bee, into the Kitty Hawk command, and into the Navy Bureau of Personnel at the Pentagon.

"I feel a sense of accomplishment in exposing these people," said Steve Nash, a former Navy SEAL who lives in Fairfield and was one of the first to raise questions about McCauley. "It's really sad that we have to do this. It's part of what our society has become.

"At times, we really feel bad for the families. But guess what? We're not the ones who (hurt them). We have outed the truth, and the people that are phonies are the ones hurting their families."

Nash and other Navy veterans say that the war on terrorism has bred a new wave of fabricated heroes. But stolen valor was an issue even before Sept. 11.

In August, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., was exposed after he falsely claimed to be a former Navy SEAL and Purple Heart recipient. [Military.com Editors' Note: The preceding statement is false and a misprint.] Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph J. Ellis had claimed to be a platoon leader with the 101st Airborne in Vietnam, but last year it was revealed that he spent the war teaching history at West Point.

And in 1996, the Navy's top admiral, Mike Boorda, killed himself after revelations that he had been wearing Vietnam decorations he had not earned.

"There are college professors out there doing it, there are ministers, police officers, Boy Scout executives -- you name it," Nash said. "There are weekends we get over a thousand calls asking about these guys."

In McCauley's case, one red flag was the photo that showed a Navy SEAL patch on the left breast of his jacket. At least, it looked to any civilian like a blue Navy SEAL patch, with the SEAL trident insignia and the words "AO1 (S.E.A.L.) McCAULEY" stitched in gold.

But several Navy sources, including Cmdr. Ryan Zinke of the BUD/S training facility in Coronado, confirmed that such a patch existed nowhere within the Navy. Likely, they say, it was purchased and customized at a collector's shop.

Gordon, of the Pacific Fleet headquarters, said the wearing of unauthorized insignia was a violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. By the UCMJ's definition, Gordon said, this constituted "conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline and was of a nature to bring discredit to the armed forces." Such offenses are punishable by a bad-conduct discharge, he said.

Zinke also was suspicious after hearing McCauley's tales of being wounded in Afghanistan.

"That's impossible," Zinke said. "Of the SEALs that are forward-deployed in that theater, none have received any wounds, or listed any casualties, however minor. It's absolutely for certain that he was not involved in any naval special warfare capacity."