Am I Getting Scammed?

Several men have asked me this lately. Here is the best answer I can provide:

As long as you don't send money, you are not getting scammed.

That's all I have to say.

I have established contact with dozens of women in the former Soviet Union through online personal ads, and I have maintained contact with a few for a long time. I have never sent money to any of them. A few hinted at money problems, but I never offered to send money. If they stopped writing to me because of that, I don't mind. In much of the former Soviet Union, salaries are below $100 a month, even for highly trained and educated people. Considering this, it amazes me how willing some men are to send $1500 to someone in Russia they've never met. I have to wonder whether these men have bothered to learn anything about Russia before trying to find romance there. To get off-topic for minute, the low wages do not mean that stuff is cheap. Certain things are cheap. Train and bus travel between cities is much cheaper than you would expect. Public transit in cities is almost free by Western standards. Renting an apartment may only cost $30 a month in some cities, but these are communist housing projects that are falling apart and full of cockroaches. I'm not sure there's any city in the former Soviet Union where it's normal to have hot and cold running water all the time. Anything imported costs real-world prices. Most people have no expectation of ever owning a car. Few people have a computer at home or at work. If you are aware of common scams, you are not likely to get ripped off. If you don't know anything about the scamming problem in Russian personal ads, check out my page about Russian Bride Scams. The best news about the scamming problem is that most of the women who have online personal ads are sincere, and most of the scams are simple and obvious once you're aware that the problem exists. There is one potential source of free personal advice - the Russian Women Yahoo Group. This used to be known as the Russian Women mailing list and there is still a link under this old name at Elena Petrova's website. One problem with this group is that it is rather a pain to get permission to view and post messages. First, you have to answer a bunch of questions from Yahoo, and then you may have to wait a couple of days for the moderator of the group to approve your application to join. But once you get in, there is some useful information, and not just about scams. Take everything in the proper perspective, though. Like anywhere else, people shoot their mouths off regardless of whether they know what they're talking about. A little further down this page, I'll mention a couple of people you can pay for advice. If you have established contact with someone in Russia and you are not sure that you are communicating with a sincere lady, you can either pay for expert advice, or you just have to keep communicating until you are sure. It's also sensible to deal only with good agencies. You might like to check out my page about my non-scam experience with links to good sites. Sometimes when I look at websites that were reportedly used by scammers I wonder whether the men who used these sites did any research at all. I mean, never mind whether you trust the operator of the website, many of these websites don't provide a search engine or other necessary tools to help you find ladies who might be suitable for you, and many of these websites provide no warning about the scamming problem or any reasonable advice about communicating with Russian women. You can find scammers on reputable websites, too, but you can report them to the website operator and the scammer's profile will be removed from the database promptly. It looks like scammers' favorite websites these days are ones that are free or cheap for men to use, and therefore provide no customer service or warnings about scammers or any useful advice. This includes free American websites of personal ads that are designed for Americans to meet Americans. At sites like this, Russian scammers can find men who have no idea about these scams. Sincere Russian women use free websites, too, but if you want to minimise your chances of wasting time in communications that turn out to be insincere, you're better off dealing with a reputable website operator. If you have educated yourself as much as possible with the resources above and you still don't trust your own opinion in judging a scam, Elena Petrova sells an electronic book about avoiding scams called The Anti-Scam Guide. If you buy the book and still have questions, she will answer your questions. Elena is a Russian lady who emigrated after marrying a South African man. It can be impossible to judge a person's motives based only on email communication, but since Elena is Russian, I think you could at least rely on her to answer factual questions such as: A Russian lady asked me to send her $100 to pay for such-and-such, does such-and-such really cost $100 in Russia? Here is a banner link to Elena Petrova's website: Another person who offers advice for a fee is Jack Bragg who runs First Dream. I think it's safe to say that both of these people are more expert about Russia and Russian scams than I am. Another person you can pay for help is Michael Muinov who is a Russian lawyer. Russia is still very bureacratic and government offices keep a lot of information about Russian citizens. For $90 Muinov will look up available public records on anyone in Russia. I'll mention a bit of a caveat here. Muinov is relatively new to the internet, or at least I've only heard of him recently. So I won't go so far as to say I recommend him just because I don't know enough about him. The testimonials on his site look good, though.