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What he or she isprobably trying to do is tosuck you into into the so called Russian Dating Scam. That's the experience of oneAustralian man who was recently the target of such a deception.
Fraudsters behind theRussian Dating Scam usually target single40-something males, andonce trust is established through ongoing dialogue, the fraudstersstart requesting money, which is usually required becauseof some unforeseen misfortune.It's really just a variant of the infamous Nigerian Letter scam,where the target is persuaded to advance relatively small amounts of money in the hope of gaining a much larger amount. In the case of theRussian Dating Scam, victims are tricked into handing over sums of money in the hope of gaining the love of a beautiful woman.
The Sydney Morning Herald recently highlighted a case of Danny, a 45-year-old Australian music producer who was approached by Lena (pictured), apparently a Russian doctor, who said she like his MySpace profile.
From theoutset Lena sent longromantic emails that talked about how much she wanted to visit Australia. Surprise, surprise, during the course of the exchange of emailsLena decided to visit her sister in Australia, but Danny wasn't initially asked for money.
It was only afterLena's brother-in-lawstarted having problems transferring the money to Russia for the air fare that Danny was asked for assistance, and that's when alarm bells started ringing.
"I was happy for her to come, but I wasn't about to send her money or anything. I thought maybe she was young and doing something a little rash,"Danny told the Sydney Morning Herald.
By checking the IP addresses attached to the emails he received from Lena, Dannydiscovered that the emails were originating from the Czech Republic, not St Petersburg, where Lena claimed to live. He also found that the emails were being sent via a mass email client. When Danny confronted Lena with this information, he stopped receiving emails.
What's the take away of this story?
The next time an attractive woman starts throwing herself at you on MySpacefor no good reason, it's probably not because you've got a cool profile.
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