Camp Foster Marine gets six months on variety of charges
By Cindy Fisher, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, October 28, 2007

CAMP FOSTER, Okinawa — A Marine private first class was sentenced to six months in the brig and a bad-conduct discharge Friday on a slew of charges including larceny and masquerading as a corporal.

Pfc. Brian J. Carbone, assigned to Camp Foster, was convicted Thursday after a two-day court-martial. Among the other charges were housebreaking, unauthorized absence, wrongful appropriation, unlawful entry and making a false official statement

Beside the discharge and jail time, he also will forfeit two-thirds of his base pay — $867 — for six months and be demoted to private.

According to evidence presented at the trial, Carbone, who joined the Marine Corps in July 2006, was a week late reporting to Okinawa because he missed a flight and returned home to Pennsylvania without notifying anyone. And when he checked into his Okinawa unit in May he was wrongfully wearing corporal chevrons.

After that rocky beginning, Carbone illegally used a government vehicle and broke into the Foster Youth and Teen Center on July 3 and carted away disc-jockey equipment worth about $2,700.

According to testimony, he kept the equipment in his barracks until he was caught 44 days later.

Barracks keys normally secured in a barracks manager’s office were later found in his room, and a search of his room after he was arrested turned up a digital camera and bag worth about $600 that were stolen from a fellow Marine.

Carbone faced a maximum sentence of 12 months’ confinement, forfeiture of two-thirds pay for 12 months, reduction to private and a bad-conduct discharge.

He already has served 71 days of pretrial confinement.

Ellie