Lonely hearts broken by unscrupulous site
LONELY hearts looking for love online with Russian women are being ripped off by an unscrupulous website that generates fake correspondence, claims a Johannesburg businessman.
Nathan Greenberg says he can prove the website cheats its members because he received a letter purportedly from his Russian girlfriend, when she was already staying with him in Johannesburg.
The letter supposedly from lovesick Nailya Nagaeva on December 30 cost Greenberg $6, as the Globaladies website charges men for each letter they send or receive. In it Nagaeva asks Greenberg why he had not sent her any e-mail recently. Yet she had arrived in SA on December 16.
Now Greenberg is wondering how many letters — and the women who supposedly send them — are genuine.
“It’s skulduggery. They are selling dreams and preying on people’s weakness,” Greenberg says. “I estimate that I have wasted at least $1000 on spurious correspondence over the years. Every time a man receives or sends a letter it costs one token and that’s why they are trying to generate correspondence.” Tokens cost from $4,49 to $6,50 each, depending on how many are bought in advance.
The women are recruited by agencies operating in Russian cities. Since most of the women speak little English and have no internet access, the agency translates and handles all their e-mail.
Greenberg has visited Russia four times and often found that women who had seemed enthusiastic were no longer available when he asked to meet them.
After lodging an initial complaint a year ago Greenberg received a reply denying that the website was run by liars and thieves, but not addressing his accusation that they generate fictitious letters.
Greenberg complained again with the fresh evidence of Nagaeva’s letter. The response from support manager Robin Datz said Nagaeva had asked the agency to send out Christmas greetings on her behalf while she was away. “This appears to be a perfectly logical explanation,” Datz said. The agency has also replied, saying: “We can guarantee that she wrote all her response letters by herself. We apologise once more for this unpleasant situation.”
Local internet researcher Ramon Thomas says it is impossible to say how many South Africans use such sites and how much they are spending. It is the kind of thing most men keep quiet about, he says. “People are not talking about it, so it could be more common than we think.”
Globaladies.com is owned by a US company called European Connections. It pays the agencies to recruit and translate for the women, and its website assures clients: “Obviously a bad agency could fabricate profiles and correspondence. If an agency fabricates anything, that agency is blocked. In the first years, GL (Globaladies) had to block a good number of agencies. Now, only one or two a year.”
Several websites dedicated to exposing fraudulent dating agencies have received complaints about Globaladies. And the organiser of one site, agencyscams.com, says the ultimate owners are elusive.
“They keep their details private because it is a scam,” says Jim, a Canadian who lived in Russia for seven years. Jim guards his own contact details carefully too.
“I am ruining the business of criminals. I get death threats all the time.” He estimates that half of all Russian marriage agencies are scams.
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