Presented here for your edification are some tips and tactics which may be helpful in finding out whether your correspondent is a scammer:

If you want to give away your money, then send it to me! Otherwise, ALWAYS follow the above rule and you will never go wrong.

Now, there are the proverbial exceptions to the rule, which are namely these:

· You may send a modest amount of money to someone that you have actually met and that you intend to support or who is now (only after having met her family and friends) your true fiance or spouse. BUT never send money for any type of Government fees – those should always be paid by you directly to the Government agency – for any applications or fiance-visa processes.

· You may pay a reasonable amount of money for quality, competitive services provided to you by legitimate companies for Agency fees/services, Internet costs, tours, accommodations, meals, transportation, and in limited circumstances for contact info such as her address and phone number. BUT in order to use this exception, you must have already validated the legitimacy of the agency, your correspondent(s), AND have a non-agency mode of communication (e.g. home telephone, written letters, etc.)

· And finally, you may pay for sex – not prospective sex, not virtual sex and not even phone sex – just real sex, and ideally only for good sex.

Note: this can be a service provider, the Author is no prude, but this exception also includes any woman that you travelled to meet in person. The bottom line is don’t become her Sugar Daddy unless she has given you some Sugar first.

Additional notes:
- If this is what occurs, don’t cry about it to me later or file a scam report. You are a big boy and should know that this is what the “relationship” was really all about.

- See also my page on Human Trafficking

Remember: Send letters, send photos, send poetry, send flowers and certainly send your love but don’t send money. Her saying “I Love You” should mean, “I want to be with you.” It should not mean, “Can you send me two hundred and fifty bucks?”

Don’t you just love the Internet?! This is extremely basic but a great habit to develop. Make it your routine to Google (web-search) any bit of information that she provides including but not limited to her name, agency’s name, telephone number, email address, street address, anyone else’s name, etc. If anything that she provides you comes up on Scam Alert or any trusted anti-scam source, you will be ahead in the game.

The best way to assure that you are dealing with a real person is to hire a solid, reputable private investigator. Such an investigator should at a minimum be able to confirm her identity, check any police records and other records (like marital/divorce records), and verify such things as her education, job, dating status, family, children, etc.

Of course, this can be expensive and locating a good investigator in her home-city can be difficult. However, if you are seriously planning on marrying her (and certainly before you ever send her any significant money at all) you should consider the benefits of conducting a full investigation.

This is a tactic that you may need to arrange yourself, however, if you are able to do it, then it could be one of the best ways to reassure yourself that you are dealing with a real person, who is unlikely to be a scammer. This is the next best way of being certain you are dealing with a real person short of paying for a full-scale private investigation and can likely be done at a fraction of the cost.

The idea is simple. Locate a source in the same city as your correspondent that you trust. This might likely be a friend, a reputable marriage agency, a florist, a hotel, a private detective’s office or even the local branch of Western Union. Make an arrangement with this trusted third-party where you will pay them a reasonable fee just to verify the identity of the lady that you will send to them. All that they need do is verify that the person is who she has told you she is. They should be able to verify her name, age, and address at a minimum by perusing her authentic documents. (They don’t have to be experts and don’t worry, they are not as fearful of being sued as in Western society so they don’t need to make any warranties to you nor fear that you will sue if they miss something.) If you can negotiate that they will scan or photocopy her records for you and take a picture of her and send these to you that would be even better.

Now, of course, this is not something that you would be able to pursuade a casual correspondent or someone whom you have only just met online to do for you. Nor should you try.

However, there is absolutely no reason that a genuine woman who is saying “I love you” and making all sorts of representations that she wants to come to you, build a life together, get married to you, etc. would not take an hour or so out of her day to go to an office at your request just to show them her identification, driver’s license, passport etc.

As you can readily see, by setting up the above verification, you will screen out virtually all but the hard-core “Deep Visa/Marriage” scammers, who despite saying they are ready to get on a plane to fly to you next week, won’t dare dream of keeping such an appointment that you have arranged independently. Certainly, any cases of identity theft or masquerade will be uncovered using this tactic – before you get in too deep or spend any real money!

The Bottom Line: A little investment of $50 or less could save you a lot of headache and heartache.

(Hey Agencies and Entrepreneurs! This is a need that is being unfullfilled in your city. If you would like to earn some easy money you should consider this little sideline. If you would like to be listed in the Marketplace as offering this service, drop me an email. –The Author)

The third best way to at least confirm that you are dealing with the girl in question, and not some other person, is to request a specific unique photo. But here is the key! Don’t just simply request that she hold up a sign with your name on it – such a photo is very easy to fake.

The ideal situation would be for you to send her something in the mail, anything really, it could be a postcard of your hometown, a handwritten drawing, a pressed flower, whatever and then request for her to send you a photo of HER holding the item. (She won’t know what the item is until she receives it.) In this way, you assure yourself that you are at least dealing with that person and you also get the extra bonus of establishing a non-Web channel of communication.

A lesser alternative would be to ask her to take a photo doing something really crazy like patting her head and rubbing her stomach at the same time or anything that might be hard to fake.

Remember this only helps you learn that the person is real, and that this is not some guy using someone else’s photos that may eliminate those types of scams but not the real difficult ones like the Visa Scenario, etc. since with those scams, your correspondent will be real enough to try and run those scams on you.

This is not so much a tip or tactic as it is just a matter of common sense and decency. A real woman from Russia, Ukraine, etc. will not hesitate to give you her mailing address so that you can write to her, send her flowers, send her postcards, cds, gifts, poetry, drawings, books, photos, etc. etc.

Don’t take any excuses about language difficulty, the time it takes for international mail (DHL and others are available in most places, and regular post takes only 2-3 weeks at most, unless you are sending a package that could possibly get tied up or “lost” in customs), fears about being “stalked” or concerns for her “privacy” or any other lame excuses for her not wanting to provide her valid address.

The only unsavory but legitimate reason is if you are dealing with an Agency and they first want you to buy her address. If you met her or saw her profile on a F2P website, refuse to pay for her address, and consider it a Warning Sign. If you found her first on their own website, and she is exclusive to them, then it is ok for you to pay a small fee for that information.

The Author does not believe that there is ANY legitimate circumstance where an Agency should either restrict non-Agency communication or refuse to provide for free or at a reasonable price, the girl’s contact information including her real mailing address.

Needless to say, once you have obtained the lady’s address you should not only write to her, but you can also use it in various ways such as sending her flowers (using a third-party—not the Agency) including a photo of her receiving them, having the address verified by a private investigator and in other ways.

Note: Regarding non-Agency communication restrictions, I believe it is best to hold a presumption that something is wrong with this situation. At best, the Agency fails to understand what its real purpose should be (that of helping its clients and lady-patrons get together) and fails to appreciate that it will not lose any significant money by allowing non-Agency controlled communication and in fact stands to gain much more money by providing you excellent customer service and travel services when you finally go meet your correspondent in person. At worst, such a restriction is only because it is a scam.

This is a tactic that is most effective against the larger scams where the goal of the scammer is to set you up with the correspondence and drop the pitch on you for a large sum of money.

With this tactic, what you do instead of complying and sending the whole large sum at once is only send a tiny bit of money with the idea that patience is going to be needed for them to get it all.

For example, say she is writing you very frequently and then drops the Travel Con, Visa or Accident/Illness Scenario on you. Instead of sending the $500 dollars that she requests, you send her just $25 and tell her to save it up and that you will send another $25 in a couple of weeks. Needless to say, the real girl will be patient and the scammer will tell you what to do with your $25 bucks!

Pay very careful attention if she doesn’t blow you off entirely because she may have it in mind to convert you into a “Cash Cow” whilst focusing her attention and time on her next victim for the big score. If she shows any drop-off in her enthusiasm or frequency of correspondence when you adopt this tactic call her on it and walk away if need be.

This tactic is less effective for those scams such as the Classic or Agency Shill where they want you to pay minimal amounts for as long as you are dumb enough to continue doing so. For these scams, you can still put the basic idea to use in this way:

If the Agency offers say a lower subscription level or charges based on the girl’s usage or the correspondence, purchase only the minimum amounts or smaller amounts. In this case, what you are stretching out is not so much the money but the TIME of your overall correspondence. So for example instead of paying $200 in two months for a subscription level of $100/month for unlimited email exchange, pay for just five exchanges for $20 a month and you will spend the same amount over ten months.

It is always good to have more time with your correspondence. It gives you time to really get to know who you are writing to (as they live their life) and it gives you time to plan a trip to visit her, if she is for real. And if she is a scammer, it will give you more time to uncover that through all of these means set forth here.

This is a traditional anti-scam tactic that can work well. You have to first locate a legitimate and independent florist, which is not too difficult these days, and you simply pay to have flowers delivered to her and ideally get back both a “report” confirming the delivery and perhaps a photo of her receiving them. Of course, you will need to have her address. Just keep in mind that for many of the more serious Common Scenarios, these scammers will provide you with their name and address and go to some measure to prove that they are real (except for pure identity-theft and masquerade situations) so as to convince you to send them the big bucks when the time comes. Still this tactic can be useful to screen out many scammers and by the way, if the girl is for real, she will be delighted that you sent her flowers.

No, this doesn’t mean you have to follow the advice of Jimmy Soul. What I am asking you is to take a look at how an Agency portrays itself and understand what that says about its motivations. If an Agency only includes beautiful girls among its lady-profiles and doesn’t have any ordinary looking or even ugly women profiled this means that it doesn’t really care about matchmaking.

Indeed, an Agency, even if legitimate, which purposely excludes homely lady clients, is only interested in making maximum profit and probably not going to provide you with excellent customer service unless you are willing to pay a premium for it.

Worse though is that the absence of ugly girls should be considered a Warning Sign. It is likely that the Agency is running the Agency Shill Scenario or possibly it could be a total scam as in a fake agency all together (Large Scale Mirage).

Another aspect of this is that Agencies that don’t have a real mix of profiles have probably obtained their profiles by submission to it and culled the best for its website. The problem is that when an Agency allows remote submission via the Internet there is no guarantee of the genuineness of the info and a higher probability of Masquerade and Identity Theft. Even remote submission through the regular mail would be better.

One thing that I like to do is to review who is behind the website and to take a look at any available revisions and history. Consulting the Whois Directory may be insightful. Finding out the name of the registrant, where the site is hosted, when the domain name was registered, etc. can provide all sorts of useful info. The second thing that is very interesting to do is to see if there is any history archived. I use The Wayback Machine to pull up earlier versions of the Agency’s website. Sometimes you can see that your correspondent was previously listed with a different name, age or birthdate, etc. You can also see when your correspondent’s profile was first created and updated and also the site in general.

A marriage Agency whose website is not updated very often or that hasn’t ever updated the profiles, adjusting current ages, adding new girls and deleting married or withdrawn profiles, etc. says a lot. Especially, there should be some matriculation of some of the ladies having met their mates at home or abroad or otherwise changing their circumstances so that they shouldn’t continue to be profiled year after year.

Similarly, if you find that your correspondent’s profile has been listed for longer than two years – and yet she appears to be highly desirable both in beauty and character then there is a high probability that something is rotten in the situation. If she is for real then there might be a question of some personality quirk that has prevented her from finding a mate that you haven’t yet discovered or more likely, she is not truly motivated and committed to the idea of marrying abroad. Alternatively, the situation should be a red-flag and a Warning Sign of scamming in some way, probably along the lines of the Agency Shill scenario.

I have saved one of the best for last. The Alter-Ego tactic is probably my absolute favourite just because of the humour of it. The Alter-Ego tactic is the modern equivalent of Cyrano de Bergerac. (The fictional character not the real-life person.)

The tactic is simple, after your “Roxanne” has professed her love for you, then it is that you adopt an unknown identity to her, by opening a free-email box, using an assumed name, maybe even borrowing the the photos of a friend to send to her, and you begin a fresh correspondence with your lady.

If the girl is for real and not a scammer, then any new correspondents (i.e. you as your Alter-Ego) that now begin to write to her should both receive the same info about her (that is the same backstory and all her personal data) and probably, depending on what she is saying to you or how far along your “relationship” seems to be, they ought to be getting told that she is now “unavailable” or that she is writing to a man she likes a lot, etc. etc.

This is of course especially true if she is expecting you to visit her, claiming that she is ready and willing to come to you on a Visa or Travel Scenario or otherwise totally, madly and completely in love with you as she claims. In these scam scenarios, this tactic can be a silver bullet that will immediately expose her as a fraud because she can’t tell you that you are the one and she will be with you in Boston next month and tell you as your Alter-Ego something different.

It is ok to have multiple correspondents. In fact, I RECOMMEND that both gentlemen and women have multiple correspondents. But one should be honest about writing to multiple people and especially if they are professing love to one of them. No one should be saying “I love you” to one person and then writing to another person claiming that they are both available and willing to explore the possibility of a future relationship.

The Alter-Ego tactic is also extremely useful in exposing the Accident/Illness Scenario since the accident or illness should occur at the same time for all people. In other words, if she claims to you that she needs money for her father’s operation but tells your Alter-Ego that her dad is doing great (because you have only just started writing to her as your Alter-Ego) then you know she is scamming.

The only way for a scammer to really avoid being caught by the Alter-Ego tactic is to limit her (or his) correspondents to just one at a time and progress the scam to the pitch for money before cutting the victim loose and moving on to the next mark. Since she can’t be sure if the victim will fall for the scam until that time and since these kinds of scams work on a lengthy correspondence, it is unprofitable and risky to limit her number of correspondents in this way.

And with scams that work on volume or which profit from multiple victims like the Classic or Agency Shill scenarios, the Alter-Ego tactic may help you spot discrepancies in her story and facts, see that form responses or letters are beign used, and if worked correctly can help you head off big expenses before you travel by making simultaneous or near simultaneous travel plans and visits for both you and the Alter-Ego. Can you imagine your amusement to learn that your “true love” will be glad to host you one week and your Alter-Ego the next?