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I have heard about Internet scammers who scam online service companies. It is quite common with the services where one pays to download some information from a company's website, and then, after having downloaded it successfully, the client claims that nothing had been downloaded and that he wants his money back. There are also scammers of a different kind, which I often discuss in my articles. It's when a Russian woman-scammer corresponds and communicates online with a sincere, unprepared man, and step by step she makes him pay for all her pleasures and desires.
Though I have to deal with scam stories quite often in my relationship counseling practice, I have never been scammed by anyone myself. Recently, this happened to me for the first time in my life. It feels especially unusual because in my situation the scammer is... a man.
OK, here is my story. The tourist branch of Discover Ukraine Network (which I work for) recently started a new service which is quickly becoming very popular among men who are seeking marriage with Ukrainian women. The idea is simple: we place an advertisement into local newspapers for the man (the text is provided by the man, and we translate it into Russian or Ukrainian). The women who are interested, contact him back to start correspondence and relationship. Some clients ask us to provide our company phone number and to have someone of our team to receive and process the incoming calls from the women. Other men prefer just to provide their email address to which the women would write, and to manage all the correspondence by themselves.
Well, this time we've got a client who preferred to take care of women's responses by himself. He paid for the least expensive package of the service and we placed his advertisement text to run during a month in a number of newspapers, exactly as he requested. As soon as the advert was paid for, he started to ask me when is he going to receive the first emails from the women. Of course, I wrote him back that I hope this would happen soon, though we have no control of the responses, as we only provided his email address in the advertisement text, and that all women will contact him directly. As he was quite persistent with his requests to assist him in all possible ways, I felt compassionate and decided to really assist him a little. I spoke to a few single women who I know locally and told them that they are welcome to contact the man if they are interested. Some of my friends and colleagues are fluent in English, so I knew they would not need any translation or other assistance, so I just let them know about this man and went on with my own life.
Before I could anticipate, one of my colleagues - a university teacher of English, called me back to say that she'd just purchased a newspaper, saw the advertisement in it, remembered our short talk about the man and wrote an email to him. She was very excited because she received his response almost immediately. I was glad to hear her happy voice, because I know that she is single and has been feeling quite lonely lately.
The next morning I checked my mail and found an email from the man. It said that he is disappointed to have absolutely no responses from any single woman to his advertisement. Well, I called my woman-friend again and found out that she had just received a second response from the man to her second email.
The situation started to acquire an interesting "coloring", and I made two more calls to the other women-friends who I'd spoken about the man. I was glad and surprised to hear that both of the other women did buy the newspaper and sent the man their letters of introduction. He responded to both women immediately, too. All the three women told me that they were not very happy because the man requested their photos but he never sent them back a photograph of himself. Well, I suggested them to try asking once more.
Starting from that day and on till now, I have been receiving short, one-line emails from the man, saying that he is not satisfied with the result of the advertisement. In the beginning, I sent him long letters with responses and explanations trying to make him understand that I have no control of the advertisement, and that I am doing everything I can to assist him. Then, I realized that he is not even reading my emails, for he ignored all my attempts to assist. I realized that he is just trying to irritate or scare me a bit. He kept sending me one-line messages like "I am disappointed. I have not received a single email of response to my advertisement".
Well, I waited for a few days and then dared to reveal to him that I know at least one woman who is actively corresponding with him. And, as she is my friend, she can even provide me his response to her emails as a confirmation. There was a pause of one day, but them the man wrote back to ma again: "I am extremely disappointed with response to advertisement. Yes I received one reply. What help can you give me without more money? Yours sincerely..." Well, I received this when I already knew for sure that he'd definitely received more than one response... What could I do? I did not respond to this email at all.
Then, I started receiving staff like "Give me back my money." theser short one-line long emails started coming every day, and were quite irritating. I'd spent the money to pay the publishing houses for placing the advertisement. Our company benefit was only a few dollars, and the largest percent was spent to place the advert for the man.
I was upset. In fact, the issue is not the money, but the attitude. Instead of thankfulness for all the extra effort that I made to help him connect with the women I know, he kept blaming me of not providing the services well, which was not true. I was also shocked to see how bluntly he lied to me and how easily he accepted the fact that I revealed his lie.
No need to say, I sent him a scanned copy of the payment slip to prove that I'd placed that ad, and a scanned copy of the paper with his ad in it. What esle could I do? I guess nothing.
In real, I could not believe that he did not receive any emails from women. The advertisement was placed in 38 cities and kept running weekly during a month. I know from numerous experiences of working with other men that this service is extremely efficient. There are allways dozens (or even hundreds) of responses to each advertisement. Among them, there are many emails from dating agencies or individual women who are not defilitely interested in marriage. Some just want a bit of fun, some may be scammers, some may be very hesitant about everything and quit the correspondence after a few first emails. But there always are a number of responses from honest women, who have sincere intentions of creating a family.
I was upset to get into the situation, of course. But I have learned a valuable lesson... Of course, I had to tell the story to my women-friends, because I felt responsible for having them involved into all this situation. One of them told me she stopped her communication with the man after she found out about his behavior. The other two told me that they anyway were thinking about quitting it, for he has never sent them his pictures, and they did not know who they were corresponding with, anyway.
I wonder, how many other women are out there waiting for his emails now, innocently hoping that they have found an honest, kind and caring man?! I wish I did have a bit of control over that advertisement!
