SCAMS (The Business)
By Anatoly Neverov
As more and more Western men seek life
partners in the former USSR, the quantity of male victims
is rising. They fall prey to so called “scammers” -
individuals or groups of people who, using the internet,
defraud money from too naive or credulous persons. I would
like to share with you some tricks used by these dodgers.
I am going to produce here several situations known by me
when a man was bamboozled by an artful and crafty crook.
Please get acquainted with them and use in the search of
your soul mate.
I’d classify the scammers
in 2 categories:
Scammer-loner: a
person who works alone and operates on his/ her own.
Scammers-bandits:
collectives (bands) of scammers. Matrimonial services and
bands using such services created especially for scam.
1. Let’s begin with the
first category. Here is the usual situation:
a man (M)
finds in the internet a female (F), contacts her, they
begin to correspond and in a short period of time they
become “friends”. After exchange of several letters M
feels more and more sympathy and affection for F; her
letters become necessary to him, he wants to communicate
more and more often with her, they begin to plan their
personal meeting... But all at once he is suddenly
informed, that:
her internet
providers will disconnect her from the internet since she
needs to pay them $50.00 ($150.00; $250.00; $384.43,
etc.),
or today in a
bus (subway; store; market, etc.) a thief stole (she lost)
her purse with all her money.
or- her Mom
(father; son; sister, etc.) needs a very expensive surgery
and she has gone into debt $150.00 ($500.00; $800.00;
$1226.94, etc.) for this surgery, which means she cannot
afford internet now since the internet connection is very
expensive (she must sell her computer to cover the debt,
etc.).
or- the
computer which she uses for communication with M belongs
to her girlfriend (or to the firm where F works, etc.).
Her girlfriend has married a man from an another city, is
going to sell her computer and to move to Murmansk or New
York (or today F was fired from the firm).
...and so on.
The result of all these
misfortunes is one:
the
communication of M and F will become impossible in the
immediate future if she doesn’t find a certain sum
urgently. She cried all the night and just doesn’t know
what to do; she can’t imagine how she will live without
his tender letters, blah, blah, blah...
Can you guess
what M does after he knows such sad news? Right, he runs
at a breakneck speed to the Western Union office and sends
her several hundred dollars for computer, internet
connection, surgery of her Mom, and financial support for
his robbed loved one. It is his second to the last, but
most expensive virtual contact with her. The last one is
his message to her with the control number for the Western
Union service. After that F disappears forever. Her
mailbox is in @yahoo.com (@mail.ru; @hotmail.com, etc.)
which she no longer answers, and in several months the
account is closed.
The described
situations can slightly vary, but the following moments
are always presented:
F is very
beautiful, intelligent, feminine, friendly, understanding,
fluent in English, young, tender, and can not find “her
soulmate”. At least, M likes F very much; F shows M that
in her eyes he is very attractive; she never has met such
an interesting, romantic and intelligent person. They have
a lot of common; her thoughts and feelings are congenial
to the M’s ones in every trivia; the internet connection
she uses does not belong to her, that is why she uses a
mailbox in some free service like @hotmail.com; F has some
financial difficulties, but she is a pride person and
never tells M about them. She just once unwittingly made a
unintended mention of them, but if M insists her to tell
him about her financial problems, she softly but
aggressively stops this discussion - it is HER problems.
If he doesn’t pay attention to this subtle allusion about
her problems, at some point she can repeat it
(accidentally), but it is not really necessary. Already, M
knows that F is living a low standard of life, modest
salary ($20.00 or $30.00 per month), maybe a little child
who F loves immensely... and she is sure that M knows
that.
The
misfortune (impossibility of further communications which
can be eliminated if M sends F some money) happens
suddenly and surprisingly, like a bolt from the blue, just
as M has become accustomed to her letters, when everything
seems to be wonderful, when they begin to exchange of very
intimate and tender plans and wishes... Money is needed
all at once.
I know an
interesting modification of this situation: M and F
progressed to the point of preparations for the trip of M
to F’s city for their first personal meeting. M sends her
money “for preparation of his visit” - renting of
apartment, driver for his meeting at the airport, expenses
in legal formalities for invitation, etc. To my knowledge,
$US 500.00 is typical.
2. Now I’d like to
tell you about groups of people which create virtual
matrimonial services especially for scam or use already
existing services for that purpose. I know that such
collectives exist and their activity makes victims of many
luckless, trustful seekers of a Russian wife.
Long ago I
created a site with young Belarusian photo models. While
building that site, I made the acquaintances of many young
pretty girls-models, and with some of them I am still in
contact. These girls tell me that from time to time they
are invited for photo and video shots where they are shot
as “brides” for marriage agencies. The girl-model is paid
$US 3.00-5.00 for one shot, plus, if she brings to the
shooting a young pretty girlfriend, they pay her an
additional sum for each model she brings.
This is how
they operate. They hire an apartment or a studio, a
cameraman, a photographer, and a make-up person for
several days. The girls-models pretend to be seekers of
husband in the West. As a rule they shoot one model in 2-3
photos and 2-3 videos during one session. The makeup
artist changes her image, she changes her clothes,
hairstyle and make-up, and the photographer changes the
background and light in shooting her. They teach her 3-5
English phrases and when shooting in video she introduces
herself by various names. The girls even don’t know what
this is all for, but I can tell you.
Read further!
Some of my
clients have told me how they bought addresses of young
pretty girls from various internet agencies, and
corresponded with these girls using the mail forwarding,
flowers/ gift delivery and translation services offered by
that agency. They spent heaps of time and money for such
contacts, and in the end the girl suddenly informs them
that she has found her match already and apologizes to him
for wasted time. Some people happen to not use the
services offered by the agency. They just bought the
addresses of the girls and wrote to them directly, but
their letters weren’t answered. Why? Nobody knows. Maybe
the girl just didn’t like him? But I can tell you that it
could be also that the girl just didn’t exist at all!
It could be
that these shootings come from the marriage agency itself,
or from groups of independent photographers or
cinematographers who sell those pictures and films to the
various marriage agencies which do not realize that they
are crooked. Both possibilities are absolutely real. The
result always is the same: the final customer pays money
for his contact with a non-existing lady.
Now, what to
do? How do you know if your virtual girlfriend and
correspondent is a scammer?
The answer is
very simple: just deliver her flowers. I am completely
serious!
Let’s see what happens.
All these
tricks are based on the fact that the man (M) can not
locate his correspondent (F). He knows her e-mail address
in some free internet service like YAHOO, or uses e-mail
forwarding services offered by the agency where he
purchased her address. He has seen her beautiful and
attractive pictures. Maybe even pictures of her family,
child, and cat. He has read her letters. He maybe even has
her postal address and phone number, but has never used
them. And when M has finally been robbed by F and begins
to analyze their communication, he finds out that he can
not even tell, is she a real person or not? He sees that
it could be a male, an old ugly monster, or a group of
young pranksters.
Almost every
city in former USSR has a flower delivery service. If you
order from such a service the delivery of flowers for your
correspondent you would never fall into the role of victim
I described above. Obviously, you should not to use the
flower services offered by the agency from which you have
obtained her contact data if you have some doubts of its
reliability. As a rule, flower delivery services offer the
photographing of the addressee with your gift. Order this
service from them. After your order is accomplished you
will know FOR SURE that: your correspondent really exists
and the pictures she sent you really belong to her; the
contact data she gave you are real: her phone number
belongs to her and she really lives at the address which
you have; she really has an attraction for you and you
have gladdened a nice pretty woman with your gift.
I render
flower delivery service in Minsk and during Valentine’s
Day and the Russian holiday on the 8th of March 2000 my
service discovered 6 scammers. I just could not find the
ladies to whom I should deliver flowers from their gallant
men. The phones and addresses of women which my clients
gave me did not belong to the women they had been writing.
One lady disappeared after she knew that I had to take her
picture with delivered gifts.
And one more
thing, don’t trust agencies with doubtful contact data.
You should be able to get without any trouble the agency’s
phone, fax, and postal address. Its e-mail address should
not be placed in any free service like HOTMAIL or MAIL.RU.
For your money they should present the full contact data
of the lady, at least her postal address. Their offer of
usage of their mail forwarding, translation and other
services should not be forced upon you. You must have the
possibility to use the ones rendered by an another
provider of them contacting the lady of your interest.
In the end I want to tell that big agencies which
operate from overseas have many more individual women
scammers than local agencies which publish women from
their own area of operation. Big American, British or
German marriage agencies usually publish their ads in
Russian newspapers and receive from all over the former
USSR many letters with pictures and data of ladies looking
for life partners. Sometimes they work through their
affiliates who do not have to prove honesty. Big foreign
agencies are not physically able to check if this or that
lady is a scammer, whereas the temptation to publish a
nice pretty girl who undoubtfully will be sold many times
is very big for them. That is why if you buy an address
from a big long-existing international agency this DOES
NOT assure you against scammers. And the more the
percentage of young, pretty “sellable” faces you see
there, the more risk you have of being scammed. In
contrast, small local agencies usually are in constant
contact with their ladies-clients and although their
ladies maybe are not so beautiful and numerous, their
catalogs and biodata are as a rule much more reliable. Of
course, such an agency’s e-mail box should not be located
at YAHOO or MAIL.RU server...
