Online Dating Scams

Virtually every male user of online dating sites has been affected by dating scams, says Russian brides expert Elena Petrova from www.WomenRussia.com. Internet criminals use sophisticated scripts and custom-built software to contact thousands of male users of Internet personals, creating fake 'Russian women' identities and requesting money for airplane tickets, following the old wives tale of 'mail order brides'.

Emails from 'Russian women'

Those emails are hoaxes

Elena warns, "99% of those emails are hoaxes designed by professional Internet criminals. All is fake -- letters, photos, and feelings. The texts of the letters are prewritten and often sent and received by a database-driven computer script."

"The only real thing in the whole story is the money that a man sends to someone in Russia. The people receiving the money often don't know they are part of a fraud scheme; they simply get a small fee for each transfer they receive. Once someone reports the fraud and the name is black listed by wire transfer companies, the criminals find someone else to receive the money for them."

Many scams run under dozens of identities and feature different sets of photos, which are often downloaded from the Internet. "Even my own photos were stolen from my site and used in a scam", says Elena. "Most men cannot tell real Russian women from fake Russian brides. The wise thing to do is to never send money to anyone you haven't met in person."

Once the contact is established, the criminals flood a man's inbox with love letters and revealing photos, promising sexual pleasures and love till the end of eternity. "Some men are lonely and therefore vulnerable; they want to believe this is for real and disregard warning signs such as the woman never answering their questions or commenting on their own letters. They don't do any research and pay dearly."

They can get a mail order bride