The Russian Brides Scam – 2
The Modus Operandi
We did discuss in brief about the Russian brides scam in the previous posting. Let us now see how these scammers operate.
The scammer places personal ads on international dating sites. You will find a picture of an attractive girl of Russian origin. These pictures could be the advertiser’s personal photo or someone else’s. It is not necessary that the advertiser is a woman – “she” could be a man pretending to be a woman.
Most scammers are proactive looking for potential victims and going for the kill when they see one. These scammers seek out their victims at large online dating sites such as Yahoo Personals. Since big sites do not entertain subscriptions bearing Russian addresses, these scammers pretend that they are from the US.
- Emails start pouring in from all over, and the scammer starts writing back to almost all, barring a few, who might not be suitable.
- Most scammers use a standard reply, since they cannot write individually to all the responders. They have a set of letters ready with them and use them for all their potential victims.
- What is noticeable in these letters is that most of your queries will remain unanswered. You could sense that these letters are out of context containing matter that does not link to your correspondence. However, some smart operators write to their potential victims individually, preferring to focus on three to four potential victims a time.
- The scammers are extremely sweet in their correspondence, usually mentioning that this is the first time they are operating the internet, and you are the first male they are writing to. The content of their messages could be romantic and softly seductive – enough to drive a male crazy.
- After an exchange of messages for a couple of weeks to a few weeks, when the scammer feels that the potential victim is confident about the relationship, he/she ‘admits’ to having fallen in love with the victim.
- If the response from the potential victim is positive, the scammer invariably talks about “her” vacation, which is due in a short while from now. “She” will talk about visiting the US or state, dying to meet the potential victim.
That is enough to get the potential victim’s heart going bonkers. What would he not do to meet such an attractive female, whom he had been fantasizing about from the day she started communicating? We shall discuss the issue further in our next posting. Until then, keep miles away from scammers.