NEW YORK, April 14 (UPI) -- A former congressman says despite being the victim of a scam he still thinks U.S. servicemen captured in Vietnam are being held in the former Soviet Union.
Former Rep. John LeBoutillier, R-N.Y., says he believes "70 to 90 of these men are still being held" in Russia or neighboring countries, The Moscow Times reported Wednesday.
LeBoutillier, who has been on a decades-long mission to locate and bring home captured American soldiers, admitted Tuesday that he paid $18,500 for fake letters claiming Belarus was holding U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War.
Two reputed New York mobsters conned LeBoutillier into buying the letters that were allegedly written by Russian crime boss Vyacheslav Ivankov, who was jailed for extortion in the United States in 1995.
Ivankov died in a Moscow hospital last October after being extradited to Russia in 2004.
LeBoutillier said he asked a jailed Colombo crime family member to contact Ivankov and got the letters from an intermediary after paying the money.
