Here is the body of an email I sent to Let’s Run and the Brojos in 2015...I will post the response I received in another post:
Thank you for all the work you do to honor the sport of running. As a decent age group runner who works hard to qualify for Boston each year, I am particularly appreciative of your investigation of Mike Rossi.
I'm writing to forward a similar concern that many of us in the Los Angeles running community have regarding a local age group runner.
His name is Frank Meza. He has been a member of the local running scene for years and is an assistant coach for one of the nation's top high school cross country teams (Loyola High School).
Frank's solid marathon times of 3:00 - 3:10 marathons of a few years back always impressed.
In the last two years however, Frank's times have entered the super-elite level...including a 2:52:47 (94% age grade) at this year's LA Marathon.
When I saw the time, I called a buddy of mine who had run the race to share the great news. My friend immediately responded, "That's not possible, I saw him walking on the side of the course near the 20K to half marathon spots." My friend claimed that Meza was walking against the flow of the race on a sidewalk.
I was suspicious, so I began to dig a bit...and found some trooubling information:
1) Meza was named to USATF's list of Master's Performers of the Year for a 2:52:33 at CIM in Sacramento. Wow! So I went to the CIM website and found that Meza had been DQ'd from the race. NO photos of him on the course. Here's the link to CIM's DQ page:
https://results.chronotrack.com/event/results/event/event-7526?lc=en
2) I began to research the LA Marathon results...afterall, his number did cross all of the timing mats. Sure enough, I found his 5k splits to be suspicious. He ran a 25:01 5k from 15k to 20K (the spot where my friend saw him on the sidewalk). The next 5k is almost 7 minutes faster! (18:34).
So we thought maybe he passed his bib to someone else...so we went to the photos.
3) No photos exists of Meza between miles 12 and 23...while many exists for others around him at photo spots between 12 and 23. We noticed that Meza wears his number on a belt...which can be easily passed to someone else on the side of the road.
4) A quick check of Meza's other fast local marathons also show only starting area and finishing area photos...San Francisco and Long Beach 2014 races in particular.
I don't have the time or expertise to do a more exhaustive investigation. But perhaps someone at LetsRun does.