Structure: Dating Sites: Summary

Before we move to the topic of dating agencies, it would be reasonable to summarize some facts about the dating sites.
It is important to remember that all the sham dating sites charge you according to the number of letters you exchange with your correspondents and amount of time you spend in chat with them. The more messages you exchange, the more you are charged, unlike on normal sites where your subscription fee (per month, quarter, year) is constant and doesn’t change depending on the number of letters and minutes you spend there.
Second, the sites usually don’t collaborate with girls directly, they offer numerous partner programs to the local dating agencies, or partners, and it is the latter who receive the commission and then distribute it among the women and the staff.
Third, the amount of commission the agencies receive from the sites is directly proportionate to the volume of correspondence between their women and the men registered on the site. In other words, the dating sites financially stimulate the increase of letters and chat minutes.
Fourth, in Russian and Ukrainian language internet resources, the sites are more overt in their adverts and straightforwardly call both agencies and girls for financial collaboration.
Fifth, it is always hard to know who the real owner of a sham dating site is. Usually, they come from Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, Georgian, Armenian diasporas. The owners are usually based in the North America or Europe, where they register their companies and try to represent them as American or European ones.

Structure: Dating Sites

“Dating agency “Dream Marriage” is your chance to meet the one destined for you or to earn money in a pretty simple way without leaving your house. Girls, earn with the help of your beauty, learn to use it and take whatever you wish from your life!!!” runs the motto of the dating site.

Here is a profile of one of the most popular dating sites inviting you to meet Ukrainian and Russian women. Their profile is registered on the most popular social network in the post-Soviet zone. It is addressed to the girls and their offers to the female are quite different from what they offer to men.

I will not enumerate all the sites offering dating services, moreover, it is not even necessary to mention any of them. First, they are constantly changing – their design, their titles, their web address. Of course, some of the sites are functioning for several years, even more than a decade, under the same name.  Second, I do not wish to indirectly advertise the ones that might not be mentioned in such  list. It is better to focus on their characteristics.

The foremost one is that they are exceedingly high in their cost, higher than regular dating sites where you find Western women, in casual outfit, without any studio photos, photoshopped and cleansed from any shade of imperfection, and where they also pay for using the site, the same as the men do. The dating sites that offer you dating with Ukrainian women may have international, American or European domains, their servers and offices may be registered in your country, their managers and support staff may be recruited from your country and represent the company as, say, a German, or  Canadian, or American, one. Usually, you will not be able to count your expenses for the letters, it might take you a month or so to sum up all of your payments to them. The letters’, chats’ price is displayed not in Euros or dollars, but in credits, which in turn vary in their cost depending on your membership and so on. In short, a sham dating site is considerably more expensive than a usual one.

Not less unmistakable sign of these sites is that as soon as you get registered you find yourself under an avalanche of letters from women of all ages and types willing to get acquainted with you. You letters are never left unanswered, if you happen to be silent for a couple of days, they start ‘worrying about you’, or sending incessant messages on a daily basis,they don’t care about your age, social status, wealth etc. Of course, it is possible to find such women, but if ALL of them are claiming for such virtues – be careful, my friends. I have never seen or heard of any Ukrainian woman marrying a poor foreigner, let alone a YOUNG Ukrainian woman marrying an ELDERLY poor foreigner, which is inconceivable.

The next important feature is that there can be easily seen a uniformity of women’s photos, they are shot according to the same standards, mostly in a studio, and bearing traces of photoshopping. Their profile pictures are never from the everyday life, although they may then send you photos from their home, family etc etc.

Such sites have women that don’t speak English, or who speak it only on a basic level, and who ALWAYS need an interpreter for your meeting or translating their letters and chats.

It is also a sign of scamming site if there are only Ukrainian women or ladies from the ex-USSR countries.

If the site explains their high price to you indicating the costs of interpreting, and paying to various kinds of staff, most probably they are scamming you.

Later, I will explain how the letters on the part of several women are written by the same people – interpreters or registered girls, how they get salary for the letters and chat, what expects you on your meeting if there is somebody from a dating agency involved.

Structure: introduction

Being quite complicated, the whole structure of Ukrainian dating system can be roughly divided into three constituents, quite distinct, but unable to function without each other. ALL of these constituents are profiteers of the money the male clients transfer to the sites from their credit cards or paypal accounts.

First are the sites themselves. As a rule, they are based in North America, they function as officially registered companies, they have English names, they have English speaking support team, client managers, executive directors, and usually represent themselves as an American or Canadian company specialised on Ukrainian dating. The owners of such sites always remain in shadow and not known to anybody. Such registered companies may have more than one site, even dozens of them functioning under different names and designed in different styles. It is the sites, namely their owners, who get the lion’s share in the money extracted from their subscribers.

Second are the partners of the sites, or dating agencies, based in Ukraine. They are usually invisible to you unless you come for a meeting with a girl and are lucky enough to see her in person. As it has been already mentioned, they main function is to recruit as many girls as possible, the more they find them and talk into registering on a site, the more income they get, the more income gets the site, the more site’s subscribers are flooded with letters from numerous women. All of those ladies show an unusual interest in you, and your speak of your exceptional personality and handsomeness. These agencies employ translators, managers, drivers and other people who are working in extracting money from the men when they come on visit, and who offer them tonnes of various services from tours in the city to hot air balloon flights. It is the agencies who try their best to impose a translator for your first, and successive, meetings, it is they who often cooperate with the hotels and restaurants that overcharge foreign clients by two and more times compared to the usual prices for the dishes and rooms. The sum is then divided between the restaurant and the agency. It is also the site’s partners who enjoy the protectorate of the local officials.

Third are the women who are supposedly corresponding with their prospective fiances and husbands from abroad. Most often, it is not so, they do not take any part in writing letters, which is performed by the translators impersonating them, or if they happen to speak English, they misrepresent themselves, and claim not to be able to speak English. All of these women get pay from the sites or local agencies. The sum of their reward varies from site to site and from agency to agency. One more fact is that some 95-98% of them have never been intending to marry a foreign man. It is their job, and their correspondence, chats, meeting are kinds of role they are playing in order to get the income.

In my next posts, I will cover each part of this triad separately, and give some more details on them.

On the pictures below

In lots of media, there can be traced a noticeable presence of the dating agencies. Not that they are overwhelmingly abundant and posted in all the newspapers, TV channels, or streets, they are still clearly visible, easily found, and quite overt in attracting women to “earn decently.” Earlier, such thing was inconceivable, those agencies that worked were much more careful and recruited women and staff exclusively in a net marketing manner. After they gradually got under the thrall of highly ranked police and SBU officers, government officials, receiving a certain percentage of agencies’ income as a tribute, there was no longer any need to hide.

That billboard is calling the local dating agencies, the prospective partners of the site, for collaboration. The function of those agencies is to recruit women who would then be registered on the dating site, they also organise photo and video shoots, so that there was a certain uniformity in the profile pictures of the women. Those agencies also hire translators, and other staff involved in the business – drivers, who make transfers to and from airport, landlords of the apartments and houses, etc etc. It is important to remember that the more intensive the correspondence of those girls is, the more money the local agency, its staff including the women get. Many of the sites and their partners overtly offer job in chat to young ladies. You should also bear in mind that women who don’t know English, never wrote letters, even in Russian. All their messages are composed by the ‘translators’, and their chats as well, when a woman is sitting before the webcam, and a translator chatting with a man.

The other two advertisements are from a newspaper, although it is not clear what job they are recruiting ladies for – it maybe some dating, or model, or escort agency, it may as well be some sort of brothel, or even a group involved in human trafficking. All of them have powerful protectors in the highest and middle layers of local and national authorities. Corruption make everything possible.

There also exist simple one sentence text adverts, like ‘Interesting job in correspondence and chat. $1 per letter, 50 cents per minute in chat.’

Such advertisements you may easily encounter in Kiev, in regional centres, and in all major cities and towns of Ukraine. This sort activity is especially blooming in economically depressed areas, where there are few jobs, and unemployment is very high.

Omnipresence

All over the country you stumble upon such advertisements. I’ll explain and comment on them in more details a little bit later.

The advert runs: ‘Start your own business with us’, lower – ‘Welcome to the system of international dating,’ and in the very bottom – ‘Start your own business right now by filling in the form on the site’

The advert goes as follows: “GIRLS of 18 y.o. and more are invited for a highly paid job. Well consider all the types and candidates. There are not any standards and criteria in our business. Salary from 40,000 UAH on (= $5,000).”

“FEMALE EMPLOYEES from 18 y.o. are in demand for a work with high pay.
Best conditions, we’ll provide for lodging, discreetness and safety guaranteed.
Salary from 40,000 UAH on.
If you wish to provide yourself and your family with decent future, call us right now.”

It is not just a simple misunderstanding

Many of Western men, corresponding with Ukrainian women on dating sites or personal emails, found themselves in one or several of the following situations. You’ve known a girl for almost a year or two, you have learned everything about her daily life, about her habits, her preferences in food, rest, music, books, theatres etc etc. She even told about you to her family, parents, cousins, children. You even helped her financially to cover her language courses expenses, or to pay for the broken heating system in winter, or for the documents necessary for attaining a visa. You’ve exchanged pictures and even videos with her, you saw her in live chat hundreds of times. But when you come on visit, she does not appear at all. Or comes to you for an hour or two complaining on some urgency in her family or work work. A year or two are lost to you, you understand that it was a mere game on her part. Your time, hopes, and money are gone. Forever.

OK, let’s take another situation. You met a cute lady on a dating site, which is extortionately expensive. She shows a genuine interest for you, her letters are answering all of your questions, she comments on virtually all of your thoughts and news. A real interest towards you is manifested. There is only small but unpleasant nuisance – it is impossible for you to communicate out of the site, either on email, or some free social network. The reasons for that may be numerous: the girl doesn’t have access to the Internet, temporarily or constantly, she doesn’t speak English, she can’t afford to go to the Internet cafe, she needs professional translators for her letters, her laptop was stolen and so on. This list could be continued for hundreds of pages. As a result, your dating site expenses exceed your utilities bills. In the end, you are not sure what you are paying for.

Or you met a woman on a site, you were able to circumvent the site restrictions for sharing  contacts, or you paid a certain sum for her personal information, you communicated on the free platforms, you sent her some financial help and gifts, you met her and even married, but in some 5 years she divorced you, because her only aim was to get into your country and receive citizenship.

Or you are already planning to visit Ukraine, to have a look at how those girls look like in real. You get acquainted with a gorgeous woman, in some 3 weeks you come to her city, but all your meetings take place in expensive trade centres, restaurants and other places where you are supposed to abundantly spend your money on the lady, and often on a person accompanying her (‘interpreter,’ ‘cousin’, ‘friend’). You end up with devastated wallet or credit card, what is more, unlike in  her letters the woman doesn’t demonstrate any special interest for you. When you leave, she starts writing heartfelt and sincere letters, her interest is kindled again, and she insists on keeping your communication on.

There are women who like to travel at the expense of Western men, there are ones who ask money for a ticket but for one or another reason do not come.

You may encounter women exceptionally knowledgeable about your culture, or gifted in cooking, or  acquainted with your business and profession. But that doesn’t mean you’ve found your soul mate.
After this negative experience you realise you’ve stumbled upon an unserious woman and start looking for another one. And here where your main mistake lies – you go on with your search in the same place – dating site. Later you will realise that most of the Ukrainian women are merely playing games and cheating men out of their money, which is also erroneous, as long as you have had your experience with the women from dating sites only. To err is human as the Ancient Romans said, but repeating the same mistakes is better to avoid. You may make up for your financial loss, but will never return the time.

The case is that  the fraud and deceit lie on the level of organised crime rather than individual scam. There exist certain interest groups  – in national and regional level – that organise, develop, and protect this business.

Hello West!

This is an attempt to uncover the structure and principles of the Ukrainian dating business, which is becoming more and more known both throughout the Western world and within Ukraine. It functions under strong protectorate of officials from the Ukrainian police, SBU, and government. Without joint effort, this scam will never be eradicated.