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| The Fly Fishing Blog |
Russian Dating Scams: The Dark Side of Pursuing Russian Women
You have probably already heard about Russian women – how they are gorgeous, intelligent, educated, yet sweet, caring, feminine, and completely unconcerned about large age differences between them and their men. Most websites and articles on this topic also sheepishly add, "of course there are scammers and gold diggers too, but they are only a tiny, insignificant fraction of Russian women..."
The good news is that the first part is mostly true. Russian/Ukrainian women are often very intelligent, educated, sweet, caring, and family-oriented. And due to certain demographic and cultural factors involved, it is also true that attractive younger Russian women are often open to greater age differences than is common in Western countries.
The bad news is that for all practical purposes the scam disclaimer is completely misleading. Yes, it is true that only a small percentage of single Russian women seeking a foreign man are scammers or gold diggers, but if you start searching online for Russian women to date and eventually marry, you are likely to encounter far more scammers and gold diggers than decent, sincere women. This is because many of the sites and agencies that help western men meet Russian women (including the U.S.-based sites/agencies that boast about their tough anti-scam practices and policies) are fairly crooked operations.
So is it hopeless? Not necessarily, but a little guidance combined with a little common sense can go a long way.
Russian dating scams come in several varieties. Here I will describe a few of the Russian dating scams perpetrated by Russian dating sites and marriage agencies.
Letter Fraud: Most Russian marriage agencies and websites offer services where men can write Russian women using "letter forwarding services", a service where men enter a message to a Russian girl on a website, the local agency then receives it, translates it if needed, prints it out, and calls the girl to tell her to come pick it up. The girl can also write back using this service in reverse. She hand-writes or types her letter in Russian, gives it to the agency, and the agency translates it and emails it to the man. You pay for this service by the letter.
Letter fraud can occur in slightly different variations, but the common factor is that you are either corresponding with an agency translator who is writing on the girl's behalf, or you are corresponding with a girl who is in partnership with an agency only with the intention of earning a profit.
Sometimes the girl may be real and came to the agency with the intent of meeting foreign men in the past, but years ago she lost interest, or maybe she met someone else, or whatever... bottom line: She's no longer active at the agency. But if she was popular, the agency will leave her profile active and will correspond with men on her behalf without even telling her.
Or, sometimes the girl is real, and is active at the agency, but when you wrote her she wasn't interested in writing back. The agency noticed this and decided to write back on her behalf without her knowledge.
In any case, the agency continues this correspondence with you as long as they can get away with it. If you ask to speak with her on Skype, she'll claim she (i.e. "she" is the agency translator who is impersonating the girl you think you are writing) doesn't have Skype or a computer at home, or that she doesn't speak enough English. If you start talking about a meeting, she may become difficult to schedule, or she may claim she met someone else and must discontinue correspondence with you.
Or she may actually be real, and may really be writing you, but she's in partnership with the agency. She may actually even encourage you to visit so that the agency can earn money from your visit (which they'll probably share with the girl). If you visit, the agency will have all sorts of ways to fleece you of any excess cash. They can do this with both honest (renting you an apartment, providing you with a translator as needed, shuttling you to and from the airport, etc.) and dishonest means (kickbacks from taxi companies, restaurants, etc.). And the girl will be able to get nice, expensive restaurant meals and expensive gifts for herself. But it will be all about the business. The girl really isn't interested in you at all. She's just playing along for the profit, which really renders even the "honest" services offered by an agency as dishonest since they lure you there on the false pretense that the girl you are seeing is serious.
Gift Fraud: Gift services are similar. It would cost an arm and leg to ship a gift to a girl in Russia, and she probably wouldn't receive it anyway. So agencies offer a service whereby they will buy gifts in their city and deliver them to the Russian women in their agency on your behalf. Most agencies also offer a photo-on-delivery service where they email you a photo of the girl receiving your gift.
Many agencies recommend sending a gift with the photo-on-delivery so that you can see that she's obviously real and has received your gift. But there are a few common practices among agencies that make this test useless. For instance, if a girl was popular then she probably received many gifts and the agency keeps all those photos on file. So when a man later sends her roses, they charge him $80 for the roses, $20 for the delivery, and $10 for the photo-on-delivery service, and then dig up some picture of that girl receiving roses 4 years ago and email that to the man.
Believe me when I tell you these practices are extremely common, and even companies with the best reputations engage in Letter and Gift Fraud. I would strongly advise you to use these services only to send letters and gifts to women when you have their direct contact information (like a phone number) and can confirm that they are receiving your letters and gifts (of course if you have their phone number, why would you pay $15 to send them a "letter"?).
Summary: There are definitely many intelligent, beautiful Russian women with good hearts sincerely seeking a good man with whom to start a family, but make sure you keep your eyes open and maintain a healthy skepticism when dealing with agencies and websites that offer letter and gift services.
About the Author
Bob runs Meeting Russian Women, a free complete start-to-finish guide for men seeking Russian women for marriage.
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