I have received one of these emails and found it in the spam folder which would make anyone suspicious. She was ofcourse a lovely, even stunning Russian lass who would volunteer to furnish real life content to all my wet dreams and she ofcourse was appropriately dressed in a negligee, suspenders and lying on a bear rug. I figure that any female who looked like that must have an ulterior motive as she would be beating the guys off daily..
So Anastasha told me how lonely she was and how she was looking for love in all the wrong places. How she lived in the country with her grandmother and had to battle daily to scratch a living (the bear rug would pay for six months supply of food) and that life was so hard. Now what could possibly be the motive I did not have to ask myself..
Money is ofcourse, that sexual lubricant that appears to work as it has always done and it would appear that the general female population of the western world has that same itch that refuses to heal or reduce and only one salve can fix..
Finding a Foreign Wife – Internet Foreign Dating, Does it Work?
If you’re an older gent like me, maybe you’ve also decided that dating is tiring. It’s also a big waste of money.
American women seem mostly to be materialistic. If you don’t own a home and a relatively new car, or can’t provide them with “stuff,” you’re out. It’s “Take me, show me, buy me.”
Nowadays, girlfriends seem like no more than expensive pets. At least a pet doesn’t nag or cheat on you. They don’t eat as much, and don’t mind eating in and watching a DVD instead of going out to dinner and a movie. Of course, a pet isn’t satisfying in other ways a girlfriend would be.
So, as I started to come to the conclusion a pet wasn’t enough. But, what to do?
I began to consider foreign cultures for dating.
Now I know that even for close-by women, Yahoo personals are a gamble. The photos are usually old. You’re also lucky if a woman doesn’t turn out to be a guy! Yahoo does no screening for scammers. If someone complains, they might cut off the account, but it’s virtually impossible to call or email a human at Yahoo to complain. Yahoo doesn’t dirty its hands by direct contact with their dirty old customers.
About this time, I got an email from an attractive Russian lady via Yahoo. I started to really search for any pitfalls of foreign dating on-line. It seemed no more risky than any other on-line dating. Just be cautious about sending anyone money, the sites warned.
This lady, Natasha, seemed quite safe and a strong possibility. She already had a ticket to the US, and had friends here. She said she was only checking along her proposed travel route for people to meet.
The only question mark, at first, was that she was 28 and interested to meet me, a 60 year old man. However, she was just talking friendship. European cultures don’t stigmatize age as much as we do. So, I thought, why not?
We began to correspond daily. She seemed to like my sense of humor and appreciate my dry outlook on things in general. She seemed well educated, too. Her sexy but tasteful photos didn’t hurt, either.
The anti-scam sites, such as www.russian-scam.org had lists of warning signs. They especially emphasized not to believe anyone who asked for money or proclaimed love after a few emails. They also warned against much younger women interested in older men. They admit that a difference of 15 years isn’t unusual for even a very classy Russian woman. So, I was on my toes, but not very suspicious.
Well, at least I was primed for the other foot to fall. The day “Natasha” was supposed to leave for the US, there was a problem. She had stayed in contact, saying she’d made it to Moscow for the flight here. However, surprise,surprise, she’d lost her US visa. She needed about $900 to quickly get another one. Even naive I knew by this time a visa was not nearly so expensive.
I started browsing the photos of known scammers on russian-scam.org and – sure enough: there was “Natasha’s” photo; with another name, of course! She had several names, in fact.
The site’s notes on her showed many, many men had sent her money to replace her “lost” visa or obtain medical care for her mother. One of her photos showed a passport and visa with yet another name!
I decided to have some fun with Natasha. I sent her an email expressing my concern at her plight. I told her “I think I have the solution. I’ll get back to you later today.” She begged me to hurry, as she’d miss her flight.
Later, I did send her another email: “Natasha, here’s the solution to all your problems! I found a passport and visa on line with your photo and other needed information already on it! All you have to do is print this out and show it to the authorities. It will prove you already have the required documents!”
I attached a pdf of the phony paperwork I’d found on line. Do I need to tell you she never responded again?
The only sad part is the long list of men she’d scammed before. Oh, and the fact that I was still without a girlfriend.
I continued researching. I got another email. This Ukrainian lady, Ekaterina, sounded nice and very educated. She was closer to my age, and seemed to eagerly answer my emails promptly and with a lot of detail. The only thing that puzzled me was that the answers seemed a bit stilted. Ekaterina seemed to key off a word I’d use in a sentence, but reply to it obliquely. Well, that could be the translator, or her own limited English. She certainly spoke better English than I did Russian.
About this time I found out that there are computer programmers, not all of them Russian, who create “fuzzy logic” programs which can respond to conversation. The programs troll email addresses, until they get a response. The program itself can pick up on gender, general age range, education, and other factors. They respond in kind, according to a formula.
By a certain point, the program will become “infatuated” with the man at the other end… I’m guessing they also are programmed to work on a woman respondent.
This is what the scam sites warn about: Be wary of someone getting too romantic too early. This is just not done, even by a desperate Russian woman, as long as she has, or wants to display some amount of class.
Once a respondent goes past this point, the human scammer takes over, weaving a web to get money. There is even a Russian name for Americans who fall for the program: “Frogs.”
A big tip-off to a scam is a request to send money via Western Union. No other way will do for a scammer. He can pick up the money at any office, and leave no trace. Western Union’s site even has a stern warning about this. Such cheating must be wide-spread… and WU must have been sued a few times.
So, I was duly warned.
Sure enough, the conversation turned to money. By this time I was bored, so I just gave a rude brush-off answer, calling the programmer by his presumed name: “Boris, Ivan, or whoever you really are.”
