The worried mother of a U.S. soldier in Russian custody said Wednesday that her son “was lured” there by a Russian woman he had been seeing in South Korea for over a year and that he’s being held on trumped-up charges of stealing roughly $100 from her.
Melody Jones said she thinks her son, Staff Sgt. Gordon Black, was set up by his girlfriend, whom she identified as Aleksandra Vashchuk.
“I think she convinced him to come there,” Jones said in a video interview from her home in Cheyenne, Wyoming. “He wanted to see her for the last time before going home, and so he went there.”
The Russians detained Black, 34, on theft charges last week after he traveled from the military base in South Korea where he had been stationed to the far eastern Russian city of Vladivostok.
A Defense Department spokesperson said Tuesday that the Army is investigating whether Russia’s intelligence services specifically targeted Black.
You would think “if you’re lonely, don’t trust Russian women online” would be pretty drilled into U.S. troops, especially ones near the Russian border.
They used to make sure even the dumbest troops in WWII understood that concept when it came to Nazis.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTBcu34fpHc
Amazingly, none of our troops in WWII hooked up with any Nazis they met online.
Ah that’s because tinder wasn’t invented until the 1950s.
People often overlook the power of classified pages in newspapers. Earliest (10,000 BCE) writings show adds like, “young hot 34DD Russian single looking for reliable AMERICAN military general for marriage.” I’m sure people fell for that scam back then as well.
It says they were dating in S Korea
Yes, that’s where the honeypot starts. Locally.
It’s very common to have bars staffed by foreigners immediately outside of US bases in South Korea.
Not sure how it is now. But I was working in Seoul around 25 years ago. The hotel I was working at had afno and there were always these really patronising public service pieces in between the old (yes in 2000 there were still old simpsons episodes). I’d be amazed something about this wasn’t one of them.
You got thousands of troops, someone is bound to slip up.