The Ukrainian Brides Scam Gets Pulled On My Friend (2020 Update)
Most of the world by now is familiar with Ukrainian brides. You’ve heard the stories—Western men, desperate for love and companionship, journey to faraway places like Ukraine or Russia in the hopes of meeting Eastern European women. They hope to find lifelong love.
Unfortunately, those fairytales stories rarely come true. Today I feel the need to share a Ukrainian bride horror story/scam that was recently pulled on an acquaintance of mine.
To give some backstory, I met this guy in July 2016 in Odessa, Ukraine.
While my memory is slightly foggy, he was around 55 years old and lived on the east coast of the United States. He was in town because he’d met a girl on a foreign bride site, and was considering getting her a visa to come live with him. He’d plan to spend about ten days in Odessa, albeit that girl lived about an hour outside of the city.
I believe he also had plans to meet one other girl, so he wasn’t putting all his eggs in one basket. Reasonable if you’re going to fly around the world to meet someone on the internet. I have no idea how it turned out with any other girls he was due to meet. However, these are his two nightmares stories.
Odessa, July 2016
He arrives in Odessa, and I think the day after he went out to this far city to meet the girl. Why she didn’t meet him at the airport is beyond me (more on that later). Apparently this first meet went reasonably well—well enough that he decided it was a worthwhile invest to buy her a brand-new $2,000 iMac.
I’m sure you can see where this is about to go.
For the remainder of his nine days in Odessa, he saw this girl once. And again, he had to take a taxi way out to her town or village outside of Odessa. She made no efforts to see him again, repeatedly blowing him off because she was “busy” with a number of excuses. Work, family, tired—you name it, she used it.
He was obviously quite upset with these developments. Apparently, her friend who he met on one of his trips messaged him at the end, saying that, “If it doesn’t work out with [name], you and I could be together.”
The girl he had flown all the way around the world for couldn’t be bothered to take him to the airport, either. She basically blew him off, but low and below, as soon as he returned to the States, she was messaging him.
“It was moving so fast and I miss you, can we try again?”
“I am ready to be with you now, but I need money to do [XYZ] before I can come to America.”
Typical sob stories told by Ukrainian brides as a way to scam men out of their money. Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are Ukrainian brides who genuinely want to find a nice guy and get married. Scams like this though are a dime a dozen.
- Odessa Brides is an excellent book on the subject.
It sucked for the American guy, but making those kind of huge financial purchases right off the bat are a surefire way to get yourself screwed.
Despite the obviousness of the situation to an outsider, it happens.
Love clouds judgment.
But…
Fool Me Once, Shame On You…
…fool me twice, shame on me.
Yeah, the same guy was the “victim” of yet another Ukrainian brides scam less than six months after the first one. This time it was even worse, but it reads almost the same.
Again, he met a girl on a dating website or agency, the majority of which are scams in Ukraine.
Any website that charges you an exuberant fee by the minute to message a girl, to translate, or any other add-ons are a surefire scam. Stay away from them. Look for sites like Ukraine Date that have a one-time fee that allow you unlimited messages and no hidden add-ons that gouge you left and right.
Read the Ukraine Living Ukraine Date review.
He meets this girl, and again he “falls in love”.
Over the internet.
“She” is gorgeous (the young one), you can see for yourself:
Before he knows it (within two months), they’re making arrangements for her to come to the United States and live with him. He starts sending her money so she can obtain her visa, as well as giving her some other money for miscellaneous expenses.
He does all of this without bothering to Skype or FaceTime with her to verify she is the girl in the photos.
Attempt #1
The day finally arrives.
She’s heading to the United States, but has to travel for a layover in Istanbul first. While she’s in Istanbul, she gets a phone call. Her mother is dead. She has to fly back ASAP, and could he please send some money to help with the funeral arrangements?
A month later, things are better. The funeral is taken care of, but now she has nobody else left for her. She wants to leave the country and come live with him in the US. However, more money is obviously needed to fix any visa issues. He sends it.
She’s finally on the plane, and bound for American soil. This time, there’s no dead moms to get in the way of happiness and everlasting love. You’d think, right?
Attempt #2
The look on a foreign bride’s face after she gets a $2,000 iMac…Everything was going great, until she landed. She calls him and tells him that she’s held up at customs, she can’t get through. She’s not sure they will allow her into the US. He tries to solve the problem, and ends up just upsetting her. Then she calls to tell him that she’s through customs, but angry at him. She goes to a hotel. I don’t know whether she asked him to transfer money for the hotel, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
This fella, obviously petrified of losing his foreign bride before he even meets her in person, starts calling her. Non-stop. He figures out what hotel she checked in to, and drives there. He calls her once and leaves a message that he is there, waiting for her. Ten minutes later he calls again.
The phone number had been disconnected completely.
He waits around for four hours, trying repeatedly. He never gets an answer. He has not heard from her since, and I’m sure he never will. More than likely, the girl in the photo has no idea who he is. The girl he’s been talking with is clearly just sitting on her computer in Ukraine, bleeding him dry to the tune of nearly $5,000.
What does he have to show for it?
Absolutely nothing.
Story #2 – Another Friend, 2019
We recently met up with a reader who was on his second trip to Ukraine to meet a woman in Ukraine (sure seems like a LOT of the scammers come out of this city and the other beachside towns…).
Simply put, while he actually got there, met her, and did spend significant time with her, his costs added up as he spent more and more time in Odessa.
- She needed a translator all of the time, to the tune of $25/hour.
- She insisted on him bringing or buying her flowers, all of the time.
- She would never eat at the restaurants he suggested, even though they were perfectly sufficient. She used excuses like, “They serve too much bread” – then she would insist on going to a different, far more expensive restaurant. He said his usual restaurant bills were 5,000-10,000 UAH – that’s between $200-$300 USD – basically an average monthly salary in Ukraine.
Right after they made serious plans for her to come to America, he found her on a new dating site with a new name and new photos.
Pulling the same stuff on other unsuspecting men.
Are Ukrainian Brides Scamming Men All The Time?
There are good Ukrainian girls out there in the world, but you’re certainly not going to find them on a foreign bride site in most cases. The odds are hedged against you. If you have the money to afford these kind of agencies, to pay the bills from afar, and to buy gifts—then guess what?
You have the money to get on a plane, rent an apartment in Ukraine, and just live a normal life while meeting nice, normal Ukrainian women in your day-to-day life.
Sure, jobs might impact this, but if you’re at a point in life where you’ve got the money to blow, surely you can afford to take a week or two off work. You’re likely to have a better experience rather than endlessly hunting and getting scammed by Ukrainian brides.
To wrap this up, I obviously feel sorry for the guy. But you can’t fix stupid. I can only hope that not all men make the same (repeated) mistakes when it comes to Ukrainian brides.
Stay smart,
UL
PS: Go meet some normal girls on Ukraine Date before you do anything with a dating or marriage agency. A $30 investment is a heck of a lot less than $5,000. Click here to sign up.
