The scam will go on for as long as the guy is willing to continue sending money to help his "Russian princess" to get through her never-ending travel misadventure. The bait will keep the "flames of his love" alive by periodically chatting with him on the phone or sending him descriptions of "her" erotic fantasies.
In the end, he will be left financially exhausted, and " she" will continue to pretend like she is just one Western Union money transfer away for finally being able to meet her beloved.
The same scam works with single Western gay man. An adorable and lonely gay guy from Russia will be the main character of the same travel story, with very minor changes.
Most scammers ask money for one or more of the following:
- passport, visa, tickets
- travel insurance
- fines for failing to officially register their stay in Moscow
- financial solvency money ("pocket money," "travel money," "money to show to the customs," "money to show to the Embassy")
- money to pay off a loan or a mortgage
- sale taxes on the her apartment
- emergency medical expenses for the girl or her relatives (illness, car accident, death in the family)
- bail money / to pay fines for minor "accidental" violations of the law
- taxes supposedly owed on the previous money transfers
- money to replace stolen funds
- ransom money / financial debt to mafia
- presents for herself and her family at holiday times
- luxury items (cell phones, clothes, etc)
What the victim of the scam never realizes, however, is that behind all the seductive pictures and behind all the warm and passionate letters hides a cynical, manipulative, and sleek mastermind of the crime - a cyber thief of hearts and wallets. And this mastermind is not at all who you think (s)he is...
A lot of scammers actively seek out new potential victims rather than wait for the victims to come to them. Often, scammers use big online dating web sites to approach their potential victims. When that happens, their profiles on sites like Yahoo and Match.com indicate that they are from the USA, Canada, or Europe (that is because those sites no longer accept subscribers from Russia).
Many victims report that they received the first email from the scammer "out of the blue," and that they never belonged to any dating sites. Sometimes scammers even use CraigsList, Facebook, Myspace, or other popular web site to find potential victims
After a while the letters from single men from all over the world start arriving in the scammer's mailbox. The scammer replies positively to all of them and the process begins.
Since a lot of letters need to be answered, the scammer usually does not have the ability to answer all of them individually. Therefore a standard set of romantic letters exists, and the scammer typically uses these pre-written letters to correspond with all potential victims. As a results of using the sets of pre-written letters, scammers tend to ignore questions posted to them, or when they do answer questions, they answer them only at the very beginning or at the very end of each letter.
Conveyer belt strategy versus personalized approach strategy
Actually, there are two categories of Russian dating scammers: a “serial scammer” and an "personalized approach" scammer. The "serial" type is a lot more common to see, not because there are more of them working, but because they approach so many different victims in a short amount of time, so it looks like there are a lot of them. The "serial" scammers are the ones who rarely pay attention to the conversation and tend to ignore questions and send a chain of pre-written emails to hundreds of intended victims. They are hoping that a small percentage of their victims (maybe 5-10%) will be fooled anyway.
The "personalized approach" scammers are more rare to come by – but not necessarily because there are less of them, but because their work is much less visible. Those scammers have a much higher “quality” of work, more attention to detail, they answer all questions and they pay close attention to the conversation. As a result, they have a much better “response rate” from their intended victims. But the story and the tricks are all the same as in the usual serial scams. They are still asking for money for travel expenses.
In his/her letters, the scammer is usually very flattering, romantic and seductive. The scammer explains to each potential victim that he/she feels "something special" about him. Almost all scammers tell their victims that "this the the first time she uses the internet to get aquatinted with a man".
Recently we have seen several scammer using a set-up sob story about having a previous Internet boyfriend who invited her to the his country but refused to pay for the tickets, so the scammer paid her own money for the tickets, but the boyfriend turned out to be a sleazebag and disappeared, so now the poor girl is totally broke because the purchase of the tickets depleted her of all her savings.
To speed up the process, the scammer "falls in love" with each of the potential victims literally within two to six weeks. Sometimes at the same time many scammers would announce that their yearly vacation time (usually 2 weeks) is coming up. However, the duration of the "set up" phase varies significantly. Some scammers fall in love and ask for money within 10 days, while others may correspond for 6-8 months before requesting any money. The duration of the phase depends on the scammer's own work style. The longer the set up phase, the higher is the scammer's probability of success in obtaining the money.
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