Editor’s note: This story has been updated to include additional context of the allegations against Webb in criminal court and in small claims court.
Franco Khristian Webb, who was active in the community and ran for Fayetteville mayor in 2022, but who later admitted to stolen valor and was charged with felony fraud, died on Friday. He was 58.
Webb’s death was announced on Saturday by a moderator in a Facebook group for the former Lafayette Village Fire Department, where Webb had been a lieutenant. The announcement says Webb suffered a cardiac problem and died at the hospital.
Webb served in the Army from 1985 to 1989. After he left the service, he operated small businesses in Fayetteville and was a volunteer firefighter for the Lafayetteville Village and Westarea volunteer fire departments. He was a board member of the Fayetteville-Cumberland Human Relations Commission from July 2019 to December 2022. And he served as chair of the Military Affairs Council for The Greater Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce.
He promoted veteran-oriented events for the community and was active politically. For example, in September 2021, Webb hosted a vigil at his bakery and coffee shop in Fayetteville for the 13 American military personnel who were killed in Kabul in August 2021 by an ISIS-K suicide bomber as the last American forces withdrew from Afghanistan.
In 2022, Webb held a voter Q&A session at his bakery for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ted Budd. Budd went on to win the election. The bakery later closed.
Over the years, Webb had sold stereos, operated a computer store, sold burglar alarm systems, offered services as a private investigator and operated the bakery.
Conflicts with customers, stolen valor
Although Webb was known for his community work, it emerged in spring 2022 during his campaign for mayor that he had a history of legal disputes with customers and legal troubles with the state.
For example, a magistrate in spring 2022 ordered Webb to pay a woman more than $2,100 after she had paid him to install a security system in 2020 and he never did the work.
CityView found similar court disputes in Webb’s past. Further, Webb was cited by state regulators in 2017 for selling security systems without a license, and in 2022 for performing private investigative services without a license.
In late 2022, Webb’s troubles increased when a veterans’ organization, The Guardians of the Green Beret, published that Webb had lied about his military service. This organization investigates and publishes its findings of people who lie about having served in the U.S. Army Special Forces units.
Such lying is a form of stolen valor, the act of lying about one’s military service. Often stolen valor occurs when people who never served in the military claim to be military personnel or veterans. Other times, people with military service claim credit for things they did not do.
Although Webb was a soldier in the 1980s, some time after he left the Army he began telling people he was a Special Forces soldier — a Green Beret. The Green Berets are an elite force, and soldiers must undergo and graduate from an intense training and selection process to join their ranks.
Webb admitted to The Guardians of the Green Beret in December 2022 that he had lied for 15 to 20 years about being a Special Forces soldier. He also acknowledged the lie to The Fayetteville Observer in December 2022.
Criminal charges and lawsuit
In December 2022, the Fayetteville Police Department drew warrants on Webb charging him with fraud, and he turned himself in to law enforcement in January 2023. A grand jury indicted him this past November. Webb is accused of taking a total of $13,500 from three people who hired him for private investigative services when he wasn’t licensed.
Meanwhile, this past November Bandy X. Lee, a psychiatrist from New York City, filed a lawsuit against Webb in Cumberland County Small Claims Court. The suit accuses Webb of fraud.
“Mr. Franco Webb presented himself as a rescuer of endangered children,” Lee said in her complaint. “It turned out, however, that he defrauded both myself and the foundation that introduced him, lied about his being a former federal marshal, concocted false stories about meetings with other marshals and attorneys general, and in the end did not deliver anything. He took $10,000 from me and failed to show any receipts.”
Lee also cited a news report from January 2023 that outlined the criminal charges levied against Webb.
Lee asserts there is corruption in the family courts, where judges make decisions on child custody when parents divorce or separate, and this puts children in danger. Webb stepped into that, she said.
Retired Major League Baseball player David Segui of Arizona is one of the victims listed in the criminal indictments against Webb. In 2022, Segui told The Fayetteville Observer that Webb preyed on parents desperate to see their children.
Segui said he hired Webb to investigate a program in California that he believed had coached and scared his sons into turning against him in his custody dispute, and that Webb took payment but did not provide services.
With Webb’s death, the criminal case will terminate, Cumberland County District Attorney Billy West told CityView.
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at 910-261-4710 and pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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Pretty poor taste to air out all his dirty laundry at the same time as announcing his death.
This write up was extremely disrespectful and shows the deep rooted issues in our community when it comes to reporting.
This man lost his life and this report looks like it was intended to drag him through the mud one more time prior to laying him to rest. He has a wife and an adult daughter who didn’t deserve to read such a tasteless write up of their loved one at a time of their untimely passing. Everyone wasn’t angry at Franco. He mad some bad decisions that none of us agreed with but he had a kind heart and did a great amount of good that seemed to get lost in this article. We should all expect more from our reporting agencies than this.
Thank you for this informative article, and good investigative journalism Paul Woolverton,I was suspicious of many of his claims and glad you have exposed him. It’s a shame he was able to swindle so many people.