by George Platanitis

Created on: August 25, 2008

It is not a new concept to sign up with an agency to help you ultimately find the one and only person that you would like to spend the rest of your life with, and searching for love online has revolutionized the process. While many people using these services are honest, there seems to always be a few that only appear to scam you out of your money and leave you with a broken heart. Many of them seem to originate from Russia or its former republics, as well as Africa. Often, the scammer may be part of a larger syndicate pursuing greater illegal activities, or simply an individual looking to get rich by quick and illegal means. Anyway you look at it, there are several ways that you can tell that the person who is "so in love" with you is a scammer.

1. You receive a "love" message from a stranger, yet you know you did not sign up on any online dating site. Otherwise, they probably randomly picked you (and many others at the same time) from the dating site.

2. In only a matter of just a few emails or just a few days of communication, the other person expresses an undying love for you. Their emails are pretty generic, often mass mailed to a list.

3. The other person claims to be well-educated, yet in their writing, they clearly demonstrate poor language skills.

4. The person dodges specific questions you ask them about who they are and what they do, and just keeps expressing their "undying love" for you. Or if they do answer, it is usually vague.

5. Their standards for a soulmate are often broadbased (ex., age ranges do not make sense).

6. Their pictures seem too perfect (often using pictures of models downloaded from the Internet, not to mention without permission). They may also send provocative pictures to you from day one.

7. The person then starts to ask for money to help them get a passport, visa, and plane ticket. If you fall for the scam at this juncture, you may find yourself responding to further requests for monetary requests - to send money because of a complication with the visa process, requiring "further paperwork"; or the scammer will fabricate a story of being robbed on the way to the consulate. They will do whatever it takes to get you to part with your money.

8. Of course, you may find that their profiles keep disappearing and reappearing under different names. If you did send money, and then try to contact the other person, your attempts will be fruitless, as they would have by now disposed of their email address and any way they can be traced.

Fortunately, there are resources out there to help you obtain legitimate information about online dating, which sites are reputable, and which ones are scams. The following website is specific to Russian online dating, but some of the information is applicable anywhere:

http://www.russian-women-info.com/russian-s cam.htm

The following website provides information about visa to enter the US, with a few specifics to Russian citizens (available in English and Russian). It is for the US Embassy in Moscow:

http://www.usembassy.ru/consular/consular.php ?record_id=nivfaq

Of course, if your country is not the US, you can find similar information on your own country's government websites.

If you are planning to put a profile online for the purpose of dating, and meeting someone special, it does pay to do a little thinking about what kind of people are out there and whether the dating site has honest people signed up or not, so that you can make informed decisions.

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