Russian Dating Scam: Letters and Gifts

Russian marriage agency scams come in many varieties, but probably the most common Russian dating scam perpetrated by agencies involves fraudulent letter and gift services.

Letters

If you are communicating with Russian women that you met through an agency or an agency network, you always have the option of using their agency's "Letter Services" (a.k.a. "letter forwarding", "email forwarding", "express mail", etc.). Different agencies and networks have their own brand name for this service, but basically the way "letter services" work is that you go to the girl's profile on their website, click the "Send Me a Message" button (labeling will differ from site to site), paste your message into a text box, and click "Send". Somewhere in this chain of events you'll be promted to pay. The agency gets the message, translates it if necessary, prints it out, and calls the girl to ask her to come pick it up.

The options vary... sometimes you pay one flat price which includes translation and the girl's reply and its translation to English, sometimes you pay extra for each of these. Sometimes you pay for each letter, sometimes you must pre-pay into a balance, then each time you send a letter or gift the charge is subtracted fromt he balance.

Well, that's at least how it is SUPPOSED to work!

In reality, this kind of Russian dating scam is even common among agencies generally considered to be reputable.

The pitch made by the agencies for using this kind of service is that (1) paper mail takes three weeks to reach it's intended recipient, (2) many women in Russia/Ukraine do not have reliable internet access, and (3) many women there do not read and write adequate English for meaningful communication to take place.

But the real reason they want you to use these services is that they are probably the easiest place to implement a Russian dating scam. Letter forwarding is one of the biggest moneymakers of crooked (i.e. MOST) agencies.

With some agencies the Russian woman with whom you think you are corresponding is married, and has been for 4 years. She may have been in the agency a long time ago, but if she was popular, a crooked agency will just leave her profile on the site and correspond with men on her behalf.

Some agencies have only real women on the site, and maybe even mostly single and available women, but the women are recruited (at least the really attractive ones that everyone wants to write). They aren't serious about meeting foreign men. They may correspond with you at the agency's request and receive a share of the revenues from this kind of Russian dating scam.

OR, sometimes some really attractive women on a crooked site are real, and they haven't been recruited, but if you write them and they aren't interested in writing you, the agency just takes over an writes you on her behalf without her knowledge.

Or, sometimes it is slightly less of a full-out Russian dating scam... the girl exists, she is single and available, and she is writing you, BUT it goes through the agency before it reaches the girl. Well, what do you think happens when you ask the girl in your letter "Hi Olga, do you have an email address where I can send some pictures?" Do you think that question makes it into the letter the Russian woman receives? No way... the agency doesn't want you communicating directly with the woman... they would lose out on the revenue!

Sometimes this Russian dating scam is not TECHNICALLY a scam... the woman you are writing exists, she is receiving your letters and her letters to you are real, but the agency actually has a policy that you cannot exchange contact information. Or, they may allow you to exchange direct contact information through the forwarded letter service, but you would be surprised how many times the girl in such a case overlooks your request for her direct phone and email address!

And, after maybe 3-4 letters where you repeat the request every time, she'll get around to answering, "I did receive your question about my contact details, but I'm not comfortable sharing that with you yet..." (at least not until after you've spent another $300 in letters and gifts!). www.khersongirls.com does this. I will cover this elsewhere on this site where I review agencies, but don't be too taken in by all the "honesty" talk. They all say that!

Gifts

Another similar Russian dating scam employed by many agencies involve "gift services". Like letters, gifts sent from the U.S. to Russia/Ukraine are expensive to ship, take forever to get there, and often fail to reach their intended recipient. But, you can just pay the agency to deliver a gift to the girl of your choice. And, to help give you confidence that the girl to whom you are sending the gifts and letters is real and is receiving your gifts, they offer the service of taking a picture of the girl receiving your gift and emailing you the picture. Sometimes they charge for this additional service, sometimes it's included.

Well, before you start sending Olga roses through her agency just to be sure this angel is real, you might need to know a few things.

If an agency has Russian women clients that are no longer single (or never were single) who were popular, they surely received many gifts and had pictures taken with those gifts. Crooked agencies will just keep that girl's profile active and correspond with men on her behalf. Whenever someone sends her a gift, they find a picture of her receiving a gift resembling the gift you sent (agencies only offer a limited variety of gifts, so they WILL have a picture on file of that girl receiving the gift you sent) and send it to you. The girl didn't even receive your gift.

OR, if the girl is a recruited ringer (hot, but not serious about meeting anyone... maybe even married) and you send her flowers, sometimes the agency will meet the girl at a flower shop, pay the shop $5 to borrow a dozen red roses for 5 minutes, take pictures of the girl with the roses, and send you those pictures. You spent $70 for the gift, $20 for delivery, and $10 for the pictures. The agency gave $5 to the flower shop, $40 to the girl, and kept $55 for themselves. Slick, eh?

The Cure

There are several ways to really circumvent this kind of Russian dating scam.

1. Don't use letter and gift services at all! This is the most effective way to avoid nearly any Russian dating scam. Instead, contact women through "direct connection sites" like Elena's Models where they don't even offer letter and gift services, only the opportunity to communicate DIRECTLY with the women.
   
   
2. Don't use letter and gift services on women you have not already met and whose direct contact information you don't have. When you actually know the girl and can send her a quick cell phone text message or email saying "Hi, happy birthday... how are your flowers?", you dramatically reduce your risk of being a victim of this kind of Russian dating scam.
   
   You CAN use letter services fairly safely as long as you also have the ability to contact the girl directly. In such a case it is good to let the agency know that you talk to the girl via other means. Just say in your letters "... I will call you this weekend..." or "Did you receive the package I sent to your apartment?" or some other clue to the translator that any shifty business could be discovered.
   
   But if you don't already know a girl, or don't have some other ways to objectively verify that the letter services are legit, you may as well just spend your money in Vegas.
   
   
3. Alternately, you can use a 3rd party letters and gifts company. Almost all of the letter and gift scam depends on collusion of some sort between the women and the agency, so if you can use the services of some company that doesn't know the girl, the chances of fraud are drastically reduced.
   
   For instance, if you wish to send letters or gifts to a girl in Odessa, Ukraine, you can look up other local agencies (not hers) and send the letter or gift through them. In order to do this, you must have the girl's physical address and phone number.
   
   But since such a high percentage of these kinds of agencies are so unethical, you can very safely use Service Network Flamingo. They are NOT an agency at all. All they do is deliver gifts and letters throughout the former Soviet Union. Again, to use their services you will need a woman's address and phone number, but if you can get this information, I highly recommend Service Network Flamingo.