Dozens of Western men looking for Russian internet brides have been fooled into falling for real-life Russian celebrities whose photographs were passed off as “ordinary” girls looking for love.
One gang behind the scam is believed to have made tens of thousands of pounds out of its victims getting them to wire large sums of money to Russia to help their glamorous fictional girlfriends.
The swindlers used photographs of models, pop divas, actresses and porn stars who were unaware that men in the West were sizing them up online as potential partners. The gang is thought to be one of many operating the swindle and has been arrested by the interior ministry’s internet crime division.
A 45-year-old German engineer was the gang’s last victim – over several months he wired ˆ26,000 (£17,500) to Russia in the hope of meeting a beautiful blonde girl who claimed to be interested in marriage.
Had the love-struck engineer been a ballet fan, he might have recognised her as Anastasia Volochkova, a glamorous ballerina who found fame at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Volochkova, who is happily married to a Russian businessman, had no idea her image was being used to snare gullible Western men.
The case is not unusual – scammers are exploiting Westerners’ ignorance of Russian celebrities to post photographs of stars on internet marriage sites. Men have been lured into sham relationships by photographs of raunchy actress Janna Friske, singer Yulia Nachalova and pop star Irina Saltykova.
In the case of the engineer, police caught the gang when the German went to the authorities after he came to Russia to find his fictitious girlfriend.
His search ended in Yoshkar-Ola near the Ural mountains, 500 miles east of Moscow. The town, where unemployment is high and wages low, has become notorious as a centre for internet scams.
His Russian sweetheart turned out to be two men and five girls in an “office”. The girls all spoke good English and flirted with foreigners on the phone.
A search of the premises found 16 computers, large sums of money including foreign currency, and piles of pro forma love letters. The gang used a tried and tested formula: the prospective bride would claim “she” would love to meet up but needed money for an air ticket and visa, but once the money had been sent her e-mail address would go dead .
The US State Department, which gets a lot of angry calls from disappointed American men, calls it the “Boris and Natasha” scam. The man thinks he is romantically involved with Natasha (a common female name) but Natasha is in fact a man called Boris (a common male name) who is an experienced con artist.
Russian marriage agency websites insist there are many genuine Russian women looking for love, although experts contend that up to 50% of such sites are elaborate frauds.
One bona fide site, offers an explanation of the various scams and includes a blacklist of girls suspected of being con artists. The site’s founder, offers an anti-scam guide: “ The internet is faceless. How do you know who you’re talking to? A beautiful sincere Russian girl or hairy Boris writing beautiful letters?”
Other sites show the Russian stars whose photographs are frequently used in scams, so that men recognise them.
The most notorious marriage agency con man to date is translator Yury Lazarev, who was arrested in Siberia in 2004. He was found guilty of conning nine foreigners by pretending to be an English teacher called Alfiya Matveyeva.
Lazarev is estimated to have made $300,000 (£157,000) from the scam. A police raid found an Aladdin’s cave of lovers’ gifts including jewels, expensive perfume and foreign currencies.
