Elena Petrova from Russian Brides Cyber Guide (http:www.womenrussia.com) says online dating scams are on the rise. Some scammers’ gangs from Russia managed to extort as much as $1.5 million from thousands victims, posing as Russian women seeking men for marriage.

Gold Coast, Australia February 12, 2004 -- Elena Petrova from Russian Brides Cyber Guide (http://www.womenrussia.com) says online dating scams are on the rise. Some scammers’ gangs from Russia managed to extort as much as $1.5 million from thousands victims, posing as Russian women seeking men for marriage.

Russian Brides Cyber Guide is the home of the famous Russian Women Black List (http://www.womenrussia.com/blacklist.htm), online since 1999. The Black List features names and photos used in the scams and provides links to anti-scam resources.

Due to her involvement with Black List, Elena has seen how Internet dating scams developed and evolved for the past years. Based on this experience, she authored the highly popular "Anti-Scam Guide" that is distributed in a form of e-book and is constantly updated to combat the latest scam techniques.

From time to time, Elena is contacted by police, FBI and other authorities seeking to question scam victims. For example, last week the USA Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine, asked Russian Brides Cyber Guide to assist them in purchasing a license for Anti-Scam Guide to educate their personnel about fraud in Internet dating.

There were a few arrests of Internet dating scammers in Russia that caused a great steer in Russian media -- and new waves of scamming as more criminals learned the scam technique, due to exposure. Some sources consider those arrests as publicity stunts, and criticize Russian authorities for not taking more vigilant approach in regard to computer crimes.

The modus operandi of Internet dating scammers is elegantly simple: they post pictures of pretty girls in large Internet personals and then contact thousands male members a day, offering love to the end of eternity. After a short correspondence, the "woman" asks the man for assistance in buying visa and tickets to visit him in his country; the money to be sent via a wire transfer. The scammers use prewritten letters and photos of women that have no idea their photos are used to perpetuate fraud. To collect money transfers, they use low-income females, pensioners and single mothers, paying them a small fee (about $50) for each transfer they receive. The same set of prewritten letters may be used with different photos and under different names. Some photos are used under dozens aliases.

It’s a pure fraud scheme with no real things involved: photos are of one woman and name of another; letters are prewritten by men who know what makes other men click, and sent by a computer program. The program creates a database from the letters arriving to a specific email address, and sends responding letters inserting men’s names into specifically marked places. This is how Internet cons manage to correspond with hundreds potential victims at a time. After a while, a new name and set of photos will be used, and the same men who did not fall for the scam previously, may be contacted again and again.

Scammers have become a real problem for Internet personals. Every man who ever placed his personal ad online will confirm receiving dozens unsolicited requests from "Russian women" seeking serious relationships.

According to Elena Petrova, such unsolicited contacts are nearly always scams: "In large personals, anyone is invited to place a free ad; but to answer ads, one has to pay a membership fee. The average salary in Russia is only about US$100, with online personals charging about $30 for one-month subscription. Naturally, a real woman with her real salary cannot afford to pay this fee. Moreover, the fee is to be paid by a credit card, and it is only top-income people in Russia that have credit cards -- an average woman won’t have it and won’t be able to become a premium member of the site and send letters to men.

"I am often told by men that all Russian women ask them for money. When I start questioning where they met those women, it is always in response to a free ad they placed online. Those men cannot distinguish between real women and Internet criminals.