Russian visa scam

[chinadave2001]

While this is not directly related to Chinese gals, I thought some might find it useful/interesting.

CD

 

Russian Gal Seeking Comrade? No, It's an Internet Scam

By C. J. CHIVERS

 

Published: November 3, 2004

 

 

 

James Hill for The New York Times

These photographs were sent from Russia by e-mail to men in the United States, supposedly from a woman named Nadezhda Medvedeva. After exchanging romantic messages, she asks for money, then evaporates.

 

 

MOSCOW, Nov. 2 - As she sends e-mail with her photograph to men around the world, Nadezhda Medvedeva calls to the lonely in just the right voice.

 

If circumstances were different she might make a fine wife. She is young, brown-eyed and curvy, a pediatric dentist who quotes 19th-century poetry and cooks delicious meals. She lives near the Caspian Sea in southern Russia but is eager to travel. Her Russian is fluent; her English, not bad.

 

Ms. Medvedeva is also cautious, even demure. It is only after she grows comfortable with a suitor that she will reveal the depth of her longing. Then nothing can hold her back.

 

"Hi, my Lion!" she wrote to Steven Rammer of Denver, Pa., as they planned a passionate rendezvous at his home. "Hi, my soul!"

 

That rendezvous never happened. Nor did another she arranged for two days later with George Palin, who waited in vain in Montana.

 

No matter how long the trail of the jilted, Nadezhda ("call me Nadia") Medvedeva is neither a tease prone to second thoughts nor an overbooked online tramp. She is not even a person. She is bait.

 

Ms. Medvedeva is one of scores, perhaps hundreds, of fictional characters in a resurgent Internet hustle that has become a Russian boom industry this year. Using fake names, forged visas and snapshots of young Russian women, a new crop of on-line swindlers is luring Western victims into highly successful confidence games.

 

Each is an escalating flirtation between an unsuspecting man and a Russian grifter masquerading as a young woman. It typically ends when the victim wires money to Russia to pay for visas and airfare for a consummation of the affair. Then the beloved disappears.

 

The con first surfaced in 2001 but then subsided, Russian authorities say. It has recently returned with vigor and new sophistication. The targets are men in the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand who have posted personal advertisements on the Internet.

 

The crime has become so widespread that the United States Embassy here is receiving between 5 and 10 inquiries from American citizens about it every day, an American diplomat said. "Some of these guys were literally left waiting at the airport with roses," she said.

 

Most victims lose from $300 to a few thousand dollars, although one man was defrauded of $11,000, the diplomat said. The number of men duped is at least in the hundreds, but it may be much larger. "We only know about the victims who are willing to talk about it," she said.

 

Modern Russia is in many ways an incubator for such crimes. It has a highly literate population that suffers from low wages and soaring unemployment, conditions that can breed hustlers. It offers them an environment in which they can work, including uneven law enforcement and barriers to outsiders - a language many find impenetrable, strict visa rules and vast geographical spaces - that all but ensure that few fooled Americans could ever find the people who tricked them.

 

Mr. Rammer and Mr. Palin both gave The New York Times the correspondence they had received from the person pretending to be Ms. Medvedeva. The string of e-mail messages provides an example of how the game works.

 

In June the correspondent sent an e-mail message to Mr. Rammer, replying to a personal advertisement he had posted on match.com, an online dating service.

 

It seemed a normal query, offering basic personal information - I'm 29, 5 feet 6 inches tall, a dentist - and then following the rituals of new acquaintance. Do you like your job? What is your favorite film?

 

A long-distance conversation began. More e-mail followed, each message with an attached photograph.

 

The character of Ms. Medvedeva was slowly revealed. She is educated but of limited means. She knows popular Western films and classical Russian music. She provides dental care to orphans. She had a boyfriend, but he beat her. Now she is alone.

 

As the exchange intensified the grifter accepted pictures from Mr. Rammer, sent back compliments and answered questions he had posed. Two e-mail messages included pictures of Ms. Medvedeva in a bikini.

 

On July 13 Ms. Medvedeva's character admitted it: she had fallen in love. "In my soul, I feel contentment and joy when I think of you," she wrote.

 

 

 

 

[Jason+Joanna]

Unfortunately, there scams are common then not when dealing with Russia or Eastern Block countries. It has been that way for sometime. There is plenty of evidence of this with just a simple search.

[keelec]

One of the latest types of scammers that I have been meeting are Nigerians who are posing as Americans.

 

The ones I have been meeting place ads on international personals sites saying that they are from the USA, or perhaps they just contact random people using Yahoo. They list a US location in their profile.

 

Then they write and say that they have become stranded in Africa, or otherwise need some help. And, of course, love you, and maybe even are ready to marry you ONCE THEY SAFELY RETURN TO THE USA.

 

Of course, I doubt that any of them have ever been to the USA.

 

I called one woman who was supposed to be from Alabama. Except that she certainly didn't have a Southern US Accent.

 

Another woman, I enjoyed talking to a bit... was supposed to be from Indiana, and an owner of a chemical company working down in Nigeria... just needing some help cashing checks or perosnal cash flow issues. Then she never quite made it back to the USA when she was planning to come.... Well, I told her that we could talk about financial things AFTER we met in the USA..... But, eventually she started begging like a kid in a candy store.... Once she realized that I wasn't going to send any money, she asked me to never write to her again.

 

Well, I still think that the vast majority of the Russian (and Chinese) women are sincere. But, I have also learned a lot through very costly past relationships.

[se_lang]

Hey Cliff my father just met one of those kinds from Nigeria she claimed to be a 30 y/o model and was coming to US to visit him she avoided talking about her travel arrangements then the day her plane was to leave my father got an email from a "Dr" saying that she had been in a car accident on her way to the airport then proceeded to ask if he was going to be responsible for the hospital bill he replied saying he has not her husband or even a family member and the the guy was no "Dr" along with a few directions of what they can do.