David Kamau asked:




Brides from Russia (and Ukraine) are popular worldwide. This has caused a rise in Russian dating scams targeting men (and women) from the west, particularly the US. How do these scams work?

Side note: Not all Russian women are scammers. On the contrary, the vast majority of are of honest and sincere intentions. Most of them are seeking a happy relationship or marriage with compatible partner.

The typical Russian dating scam story starts with the victim receiving a response to his personal ad. Sometimes the victim does initiate contact by responding to that super-model-like photo profile. But most of the time the first contact is made by the scammer: this gives the scammer more control of the situation as well as the target.

In most scam stories, the girl usually will be much younger than the man. The man almost certainly gets excited by the thought of an attractive young woman taking interest in him, and out the window goes his thinking process.

After a few emails the woman claims to be madly in love with the man. She asks to join or visit him in his country. However there is a problem. She does not have money for visa and/or air ticket. He is asked to send her money by some irreversible method such as wire transfer.

What the guileless gentleman does not know is that he might not even be communicating with a woman. It could be a man, usually a member of a scam ring. Needless to say, he ends up losing his money, with a bruised ego to go with it.

Other ways of getting money out of victims include faking a family “tragedy”, for English lessons, for internet connection, the list goes on.

Russian dating scams are not always perpetrated by Russians, however. Back in 2004, an American man named Robert McCoy was in the news. He and his wife were both arrested and tried after defrauding his fellow citizens of thousands of dollars in a Russian bride scam. He would use his Russian wife when he needed a female voice and Russian accent (now, who wouldn’t be fooled by that?).

Russian scam rings work in various ways. One way is to hire language students for a very minimal fee for their profiles and/or their English language skills. Another way is to use pictures of Russian models and posting a fake profile on a dating site. Some Russian and mail order agencies dating sites are bogus.