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Mail order bride scams: A guide for groomsAlthough Brides-4u operates an anti-scam policy, and checks up on registered users at random to avoid the site being used merely for financial gain, we realise that not everything on the web is always as it seems and we advise you to use your judgement carefully when looking for a mail order bride.
What are the dangers?
1. Extortion
This exists in the mail order bride industry in many forms. However, the following established scam systems do exist;
- Women using the sites simply to get money.
- Men posing as women, submitting false details and corresponding with men under false pretences to make money.
- Organised groups registering several false entries and extorting on a large scale.
- Fraudulent excuses for requesting money are manifold and have taken, among many others, the following forms;
- the potential bride needs to buy a computer to keep in contact with her correspondent
- a family member is very ill and needs hospital treatment
- she or a family member needs urgent dental treatment
N.B. These requests will often request that the money be sent by Western Union transfers or similar. Brides-4u strongly emphasises that you should NOT send money to anybody you have never met in person. Please let us know as soon as possible if you are asked for money in this way.
2. Disparity between details presented and reality
There have been incidents of potential brides submitting exaggerated or even erroneous information to mail order bride websites. This is to favour their chances of receiving as much correspondence as possible and to speed up the process of meeting their soul mate, so strong is their desire to do so.
How does this occur?
- Manipulating biographical information: this varies in seriousness, from over-estimating their level of English or taking a few years off their age to participating in the scheme as a single, childless woman yet in reality being married with children.
- Submitting an inaccurate photograph: the photo is the primary tool by which the men can imagine the woman on the site and the woman are aware that it affects the volume and type of letters they receive. One woman, for example, received 400 letters from one photo. The reality therefore may not match up to the available photo, for the following reasons.
- The photo was taken several years ago.
- The photo has been taken in a professional photographic studio and is therefore very flattering and not indicative of day to day reality.
- A closed mouth smile can sometimes be a way of hiding gold or missing teeth.
How to avoid scammers
Interpret details carefully
- Secure process of online communication compared to real life interaction: the process of creating a personality from an image and sparse biographical information is more controllable than the potential for the embarrassment of rejection in a face-to-face interaction.
- Photo allows for sense of achieving the impossible: the photo allows for the convergence of the kind of image which is regularly seen in modern media with something a bit more possible, as if viewing the image really allows for the man to consume his object of desire because she seems to be real rather than perfect; a potential mother instead of a glossy magazine page. Some potential brides seek to exploit this.
- Your interpretation depends on own experience of education, work and family: you will be judging these women by standards that may be more appropriate to your own culture than theirs
How to report fraud
Brides-4u strongly advises you to interpret potential brides? details carefully. If you have any doubts about the truthfulness of any ladies? details listed on the Brides-4u website, please contact us as soon as possible detailing the problems encountered. The following links are also of use in detecting and reporting fraudulent information;
Article by Emma Newlands
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