Over the years on forums that deal with the mail order bride business in Russia and Ukraine I have sometimes received criticism for daring to suggest that a girl who might accept a guy's gift of money, or other goodies, and then some time afterward end the relationship was not a scammer.
The story is often something like this: A guy had visited a girl, often a student, proposed marriage, been accepted had offered money gifts, unsolicited, that had also been accepted. She then might ask him for money for a holiday on the Black Sea or other expenses of life, often there is negotiation about the amount, which to a western reader usually seems to be a very small amount of money. The woman takes the vacation He gets upset because she did not answer his calls for a few days, whilst she was away.
Shortly after her return, following an exchange of emails, the relationship ends. The guy subsequently publishes her name and address on mail order bride forums and scam sites claiming she was a scammer to loud hurrahs from the peanut gallery.
Now, it seems to me that whilst she is not perfect, that her actions were predicated upon the man's own behaviour and the expectations he himself had built up. The point being that, yes it is we who make the monsters. They did not exist before we came along. My guess is that she dumped the guy because she felt, with some justification that he should not have queried the amount of money and his negotiation showed that he was 'selfish'. She almost certainly would not have done either if he had not been giving her money for 'English lessons', and other purchases already - she already expected him to support her; the man had trained her expectations.
But, the thing is that she tells her friends what has happened, they realise that taking money from Americans is easy, they do not even have to ask. All they have to do is write a few emails and bingo, Mr Lonely 'falls in love'. Now, of the girls I know who are becoming engaged in this racket, it would be hard to argue that these were bad women, that they were evil, or even that they were not giving value for the money. They are ordinary women who have seen an opportunity presented by guys who make themselves the victims. Yet avoiding these issues is so easy.
One does not need to join an 'honest' agency, if indeed one can be found. One simply has to make sure that one understands how relationships work, practice them, do not give money away and most certainly never, never ever expect more than one deserves. The man who says 'I went to the FSU becasue I can get a 'better' woman than I can back home' is going to be scalped, perhaps not today, but sometime and badly.
The problem is going to get worse. In Estonia, for example, over 50% of the population regularly use the internet. Broadband internet access is, apart from WiFi, the standard form of connection and a perfectly decent pc with all the needed gubbins costs just over 200 Euro and can be bought on credit for pennies a month. ICQ, Yahoo! MSN etc are all free, webchat is common and there are millions of guys waiting to part with money. Girls spend evenings together around a pc, writng to guys, egging each other on and sharing ideas. Today, most do not think of money, but how fast will the meme spread?
