How to recognize Russian scammers. Romance scammers: educational program and instructions for use

Marriage scammers who use the Internet to gain the trust of women and defraud them of money are called scammers. It is assumed that these guys are from Nigeria, but experts say that the geography of marriage scams is growing rapidly. The following deception scheme has been popular lately. You receive a message in English via Skype from an American military man: a general, a sergeant, a doctor, who is on a peacekeeping mission in some hot spot, most often called Afghanistan (Kabul). As a rule, he is a widower with a child. The poor son or daughter lives in America and misses his father very much, but he cannot interrupt his service, because he is “called to fight terrorism and serve humanity.” In a few days, your friend will begin to say kind words, and after another week he will ask if you would like to brighten up his lonely life. At the same time, he will send a photo - in military uniform or a doctor’s coat. The photographs may contain real people whose photos are stolen by scammers from social networks, but there may also be actors from not very popular American TV series. Therefore, the first recommendation is to run the image through an Internet search engine (this can be done, for example, in the Google search engine by inserting the photo into the search window).

Pay for the parcel

After a gentle and persistent foreplay, when they already call you a wife and see that you “fall for” these advances, a fraud scheme is launched. There are several options. In the next letter he will write that he bought jewelry and wants to give you a gift; found a suitcase with dollars/valuables during a military operation and wants to send them to the person closest to you - you; saved a member of the royal family, and for this he was given a lot of money, which must be taken out of the country by diplomatic mail, etc. He can tell you the exact date when you should arrive at the local airport and receive your shipment. But there will be no parcel. But in the evening of the same day you will receive a letter that the parcel is stuck at customs in the African state of Ghana (the most common option) and you have to pay an additional 3-4 thousand dollars for further delivery. If you write that there is no such money, in a couple of days you will receive a letter saying that the parcel is already in Spain and you only need to pay an additional 1000 euros. You might even get a call from a lady supposedly from Spanish customs; you might even receive copies of parcel receipts, hoping that you don’t understand foreign documents. The beloved will also write with resentment: “We are almost a family, but you don’t believe me, don’t love me, you regret some pennies for gifts that are a hundred times more valuable...” But if you write unequivocally that you won’t pay, the letters will immediately stop, and with them - the unexpected passion of the “old warrior”.

The scammer can introduce himself as a military surgeon and send a photo of... Eric Dane from the series "Grey's Anatomy".

Pay a deposit for my vacation

A relatively new cheating scenario involves vacations. You are already planning your first meeting - and then the military officer informs you that in order to obtain permission to leave, you must pay a certain deposit. The amount is from $1000 to 2000. The bail is paid not to him, but to the US Army by close relatives. And since he has no one besides you and he already perceives you as his wife, then it is you who must make this deposit. The scammer may even send a corresponding document - supposedly an instruction from the US Department of Defense. And he will ask you to transfer money via Western Union.

My poor children

Scammers choose different deception schemes depending on the information you yourself tell them in your letters. Therefore, they can put pressure not only on love, but also on maternal feelings. For example, write that his only son misses his dead mother and dreams of a new one. Then the general/doctor will suddenly say that his son’s birthday is coming soon and he is really looking forward to congratulations from you. In response to your agreement to write him a few warm words via email, your friend will say that your son actually wants a Samsung Galaxy with a big screen...

Get ready for the fact that one day your little son will write to you that his dad has disappeared, is not in touch, has stopped transferring money to him, and will ask you to send him funds, because he already considers you almost his mother. And he will even give you his phone number. When you call, you will actually hear the child's voice. Fraudsters operate in groups with clearly defined roles.

REMINDER

What should you be wary of?

• A man doesn't ask you questions
• Talks little about himself
• From the second letter he begins to plan your life together
• All his letters are full of beautiful words and fiery confessions
• Doesn't send photos showing his normal, everyday life
• He says that due to his service, he cannot communicate via Skype video
• English with errors
• Suddenly he starts asking you to help him financially

BY THE WAY

In 2012, a fraudster defrauded a resident of Smorgon of $3,000. Over Skype, he introduced himself as an American military man serving in Afghanistan. There he allegedly found a duffel bag stuffed with dollars, said that he would soon retire, was ready to come to permanent residence in Smorgon and propose marriage to a woman, and was ready to send her some of the money. However, after some time, the scammer reported that the courier with a significant amount was detained in Ukraine and he urgently needed $3,000 to pay the fine. The woman transferred the amount and never received any further news from the swindler.

Scammers are people who register on dating sites using someone else’s, but sometimes also their own, data in order to receive money from other users. There are scammers on almost every dating site. According to statistics, the majority of scammers are men. But on sites with Russian and Ukrainian women, there are much fewer male scammers than on foreign sites. This can be explained by the fact that the standard of living in our countries is much lower than in the countries of Western Europe and Central America. This, of course, makes you happy, but you need to always be on guard.

How does a scammer work? He takes a photo of a handsome man from the Internet and begins to write romantic letters to his victim. When a woman falls in love, the scammer looks for an excuse for the lover to send him money. Below I will describe the most common schemes, but there may be more.

Scammers are American military or doctors.

These scammers pose as military personnel or doctors working in hot spots of the world: Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, etc. Their stories are very similar: “General, I work in the army, my wife died tragically, I raise children myself, do charity work, etc. Now I’m in Afghanistan, I can’t get on Skype, I love you very much, I’ll soon finish my service and come to visit you...”

These foreign suitors are good psychologists, they know how to write beautiful letters, the woman loses her head and falls in love. In fact, this man could be followed by a Nigerian scammer, or a group of Nigerian scammers; they work in shifts and do not address the girl by name. Sometimes you may get the impression that a robot is writing, they may get the facts wrong, etc. The victim is not left alone for a long time, they are bombarded with love messages and do not allow her to come to her senses and think soberly.

Such men do not appear on Skype, or appear for a moment, in poor lighting, so that it is difficult to see them.

More about Skype. There is such a technology: a female scammer calls a real man on Skype, supposedly to meet him, asks standard questions and records his image, the man has no idea about anything, and communicates with the woman. Then the scammer who wrote you love letters calls you on Skype and plays the recording instead. You don’t even realize that it’s not a person talking to you, but a recording. When in doubt, ask your man to do something out of the ordinary. For example, show his shoes! If a person does not react, then feel free to block him, this is a scammer.

Gifts from scammers that you have to pay for.

When the scammer senses that the woman is in love, he begins the second part of his plan. You may be sent a gift or parcel.

There are several types of parcels from scammers.

1. Dear gift for you

2. His luggage, in which he put all his wealth: a large sum of money, luxury items, expensive electronics, etc.

This gift package is sent to the victim, and then there is always an unexpected obstacle to receiving it.

1. At the airport they ask you to pay extra for delivery in rubles from the border to your door. But he doesn’t have rubles, since there are only dollars on the card, and his bank card is not accepted.

2. Or the package gets stuck somewhere on the border with Africa, and his card is unexpectedly blocked.

3. Or there will be any other reason why you will need to pay money. The man swears that he will certainly give you the money. And yet, scammers often name the amount that you are able to pay, the amount seems small to you, and you pay. But a thread from the world, a shirt from the beggar!

After receiving the money, the scammer disappears, and you are left alone with your pain.

Typical scammer tactics.

Making a woman fall in love with you is not that difficult to do. And then there are many options.

1. Play not her maternal feelings. Introduce the girl to the child, send her his childhood touching letters. You will even be given the opportunity to talk to your child on the phone. And then you may be asked to send money for a gift for his birthday. Or the child himself will call you and say that dad suddenly disappeared and he has nothing to eat, no money for school, etc. And you must help him financially.

2. Offer you a quick personal meeting. An American military man or doctor offers to meet you, but bad luck, you need to pay a deposit to the military unit for his leave. And you are almost a wife... and you have to deposit this money, but when he arrives, he will immediately return the entire amount.

3. A scammer can be a wealthy person who has a lot of profitable projects, and he invites you to participate in them. Those. invest a small amount of money and get a large profit.

Russian men are scammers.

Russian men also work as scammers on dating sites. You receive a letter from a pleasant young man who lives in Europe, but he misses his native Russian soul. You speak the same language, and he, like a gentleman, sends you a gift. The courier calls you and says that you have received a gift, but you need to pay for its delivery, but very little, usually any girl has this amount in her wallet. The funny thing is that this courier may be the same lover who wrote you romantic letters. You pay the courier money for delivery, open the gift, and inside is empty or, at most, a roll of toilet paper.

Conclusions.

Online dating can end in a magnificent wedding, but sometimes before the wedding you will have to face unpleasant surprises.

1. Do not fall in love with virtual fans, only after a real meeting, draw conclusions about the man.

2. Under no circumstances send money to strangers. After receiving the money, these men disappear forever.

3. Do not add unfamiliar men from Skype, do not give them your contact information.

4. Meet men on dating sites. On dating sites, it is not profitable for the administration to produce scammers. Most sites track and combat such men.

6. Check photographs of men for authenticity. Google has a service where you can check where else such a photo of a man can be found and who it actually belongs to https://images.google.ru/

7. If a scammer wrote to you on our site, or you have doubts, immediately write to the site’s technical support service or through the contact form

While the Internet community is actively discussing the possibility of banning registration on social networks for minors under 14 years of age, the real danger comes from completely different people, not even whales, no matter how deep blue they are, and especially (!) from pink ponies, supposedly from tablet screens forcing kids to climb onto window sills.

The original picture was taken from the open Yandex.Images database

Yesterday I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and publicly admitted that I finally and irrevocably love women. Exclusively women, no men, regardless of orientation and other things in real life. You will never guess what followed next, literally the next day.

You sit in your Facebook/VK/OK feed, like pictures, read the smart thoughts of others, and nothing foreshadows future problems...

While the red notification light begins to literally go crazy: at the same time, your public photos receive a large number of likes and comments in the form of hearts and other kisses from one person. This person will definitely have an “imported first and last name.” While you are in painful thought figuring out what this person from the USA/France/Great Britain actually needs from you, a friend request immediately arrives. You add it, why not.

And here the most interesting thing begins: this person begins to persistently write to you, without stopping. If you don’t answer, he writes again and again. He showers him with compliments, talks about being a single father, a truck driver from Arizona, a doctor from Massachusetts, and so on and so forth...

Just yesterday this got me to the point of clouding my mind and an urgent change of sexual orientation. “Ok, dear, I understand your desire to find a good Russian woman, but I am of a non-traditional sexual orientation!” - I wrote to him. Do you think that stopped him? No, he was stopped only by a total ban and a complaint to the site administration.

And what do you think happened the next day? An allegedly American lesbian has already written to me!
If something like this has happened to you, congratulations - you have found yourself in the sights of a scammer.

A scammer is a special type of Internet scammer who meets women on social networks solely for the purpose of personal enrichment.

This is what your page looks like if you are targeted by scammers:

I have a friend - an excellent specialist in dating foreigners, Tatyana Armstrong. She claims that a huge number of Russian women fall victim to scammers; they not only suffer serious financial losses, but also have a hard time bearing such blows to their self-esteem later on. As a rule, scammers use other people's photos and made-up names and surnames. And - the icing on the cake - most scammers are Nigerians. This is a whole criminal group: while you think that you are communicating with a nice white American doctor/soldier/driver, there is a high probability that your interlocutor on the other side of the screen is a Nigerian scammer who has a wife and 12 children, and everyone is asking dad for food and food these children are offered to you.

In general, there are even two types of scammers: the sex tourist and, let’s say, the scammer.
While a sex tourist who just wants to save money on paying for a hotel while staying in our country at your expense can still be relatively safe: everyone gets theirs in the end, then “scammers” can bring serious financial losses.

So what are the signs of a scammer?

1. No more than one, less often two, photos in your profile. By the way, if you right-click on this single photo and start searching the Internet for the photo, you will definitely find out that this photo belongs to another person. For example, I did this and found out that this “got” uses a photo of one of the real generals of the US Army, quite high-ranking.

2. As a rule, their friends are exclusively women. For example, I met such an individual, supposedly from Detroit, who had 2.5 thousand Russian women as friends. I wonder if they all perceived themselves as “the one and only”?

3. Disgusting knowledge of English. I understand that the vast majority of female targets of scammers speak English exclusively with the help of online translator services, but nevertheless, spelling errors in their speech can be shown by the same Yandex.translator. For example, in my case, this scammer made a gross spelling mistake in writing his own name. And this was not a typo; I believe that the scammer simply did not know how to spell the name “George” in English.

4. Requests for money start small, send a postcard, pay for a small online purchase.

As Tatyana Armstrong says, these scammers have only one goal - to extract as much money as possible from a woman caught in their network. They will write you sincere declarations of love, write about their loneliness, and complain about problems. Those. do everything to gain your trust. Even at full speed, they will change their shoes and retrain themselves as “American fans of Sappho’s poetry”; apparently, such requests also exist.

To never fall into such greedy hands, it is enough to know just one thing: Americans/British and others have nothing to do on Russian social networks

And if you still seriously intend to meet a real foreigner for a relationship, meet on special dating sites, contact specialists who will give advice on the rules of communication and dating with foreigners.

For example, my friend Tatyana Armstrong, a woman who herself married a foreigner, now supports her compatriots who want to start a family with a man from another country.

Tatyana, by the way, gives free lessons for everyone, which you can subscribe to by going to

She will tell you how to communicate and with whom you should not communicate at all, on which sites candidates for grooms undergo a strict selection so as not to get caught by such a scammer. For example, here is Tatyana’s example of sites for dating foreigners.

Have you ever fallen for scammers like this? Tell us your cases and how you managed to get rid of them.

The desire to meet a foreign groom is quite natural for Russian girls and women, because the standard of living abroad is much higher than in our country. To this end, they hang out on international dating sites, looking for a suitable candidate. Through virtual communication, new relationships are established and married couples are created. But is it always safe for a girl to communicate with her fiance from the computer? There are often cases of deception and fraud on the part of men, as a result of which offended and disappointed brides suffer material losses.

Who are scammers?

Girls who decide to look for a groom on international dating sites must clearly understand the danger that awaits them there. You can’t blindly trust the first man you meet. The difference between online dating and a real meeting is that you do not see who is hiding behind the mask of the photo posted on the site. A man with a pleasant appearance and a Hollywood smile can write that he is a military officer, but in fact turn out to be an old lecher.

If you fall into the clutches of a scammer posing as another person in order to deceive and extract money from foreigners on the Internet, you will not immediately suspect danger. This “groom” leads the girls so skillfully by the nose that they begin to open up and even fall in love with the man. Fraudsters on websites use fictitious names and other people’s photographs in order to attract Russian girls with their beautiful appearance and fictitious high social position. There are special services for checking the uniqueness of photos; one such program is described in this video:

Suspects should immediately arouse suspicion if, from the first days of correspondence, they complain about their fate and ask for money. To do this, they come up with a lot of plausible stories: troubles from their ex-wife, illness of a small child, death of a relative, etc. Some men even say that they came to Russia to meet their bride, but they were robbed along the way, so they have no money to get to the girl . The money requested is small, about 1 thousand rubles, because it is easier for the bride to part with such a sum than with a larger one.

Compassionate beauties run to the bank and pay the required amount on the card of the male swindler in the hope of helping the groom. But after that he disappears from the site, and the girl realizes that she was deceived. It should be remembered that foreign men always have the opportunity to withdraw cash from a credit card or apply to a bank branch for a loan. Abroad, it is the height of indecency to ask money from friends or acquaintances, especially from your fiancée. The heroine of the video below, a woman no longer young and stupid, nevertheless suffered from the deception of an American scammer.

Where can I find blacklists of foreign grooms with photos?

According to statistics, about 70% of foreign men submit an ad on a dating site not at all with the goal of finding a wife. And only 2 out of 100 Russian girls successfully marry a foreigner. The rest of the men receive shame, humiliation, violence, and insults. Fraudsters who deceive gullible girls are nicknamed “judas” of dating sites. To avoid becoming a victim of an impostor, before starting correspondence with a man, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the black lists of foreign suitors and check if your virtual acquaintance is among them.

Many Internet resources, including the dating site Mamba, publish such blacklists of foreign men. You just need to enter the phrase “black list of suitors” into the search, and pages will open with the names and photographs of scoundrels who have already managed to mislead someone. You can find extensive information about scammers and simply disgusting men on the Antidate women's forum. It's a good idea to blacklist cheaters. Such sites have helped many girls avoid unpleasant moments. But there are pitfalls here too.

There are a huge number of photographs of men on the Internet; copying them from there and posting them in your profile is as easy as shelling pears. The real owner of the photo has no idea what is happening. The groom's profile is blacklisted by the girl, even though the man in the photo has done nothing wrong. The impostor under a fictitious name will continue his dirty activities on the site, using the name of another person next time. It is impossible to stop a swindler; such a groom will never leave his real contacts anywhere.

Also, a woman’s revenge can lead a man to be blacklisted. The woman whom he refused will easily send the questionnaire there, saying: “If you don’t belong to me, you won’t belong to anyone.” It is impossible to judge unambiguously about suitors who are on blacklists. But we need to think about why the man got there, and how to avoid becoming a victim of an attacker. When meeting someone, you should find out more about this person, try to see what is hidden. If the groom is cheating, you will definitely feel it.

How to check the identity of a man on the Internet from different countries?

To find out what the man you are chatting with on a dating site is really like, feel free to ask the groom about everything. The more questions you ask, the faster you will find out what the gentleman breathes. Pay attention to how accurately and frankly the man answers you. If your questions go unnoticed and there is no concrete answer to them, it is better to stop dating.

Ask the man for his exact mailing address and home phone number. If he is not committed to a serious relationship, you will not receive this data. If the groom decides to give you his contact information, tell him through a few letters that you are coming to his city on business and want to meet. You understand what the scammer’s reaction will be - he will disappear from your life forever.

Do you like the photos of the handsome man posted on the site? But they may be strangers. To check this, ask the man to send a photo near his home, work, with his children, parents or friends. At the same time, you will have the opportunity to assess the financial situation of the groom based on the photographs you see. If you don’t have the photos you want, then there’s reason to think about it.

To avoid becoming victims of male scammers, girls should adhere to several rules. Make them a habit, and then the threat will pass by. Here are the main recommendations:

• The most important thing is to make acquaintances only on trusted sites with a good reputation. The owners of not all marriage agencies carefully check information about their clients. Look at the reviews about the site, whether the office location, phone number, e-mail are indicated, and whether a feedback form is provided. If the site owner asks you for a copy of your passport, make a mark on the scan “for marriage agency” so that the document is not used for personal gain. Choose sites where men pay for the correspondence, and you will not be required to have a credit card number to deposit funds.
• Do not give the groom your personal information, address, phone number, email until you know him from all sides.
• If during the conversation something about the man confused you or seemed suspicious, refuse further communication.
• Do not pay for any site services via SMS messages (payment for a man’s contact information, any compatibility tests, etc.), scammers can empty your phone account.
• Never send money to anyone. Remember that they can defraud you of funds in any, most cunning way. Be alert.
• Do not forget that you can also be blacklisted, so under no circumstances ask a man for money or gifts. Even if the groom himself proposes to you, it is better to refuse - scammer hunters catch them with live bait.