Main Signs Of Mail Order Bride Scams And How To Avoid Them

Dave Greenberg

Last updated: October 7, 2022

7 minutes read

Meeting a girl on a mail-order bride website is a common thing today. You can find a bride of your dreams by entering your preferences there. However, some consider mail-order bride websites to be a fraud, which main aim is just to take your money.

Is every mail-order bride website a scam? Or some of them are really efficient and you just have to know how to spot a decent one?

There are definitely a couple of signs that can tell you, whether to trust this website your life or run away. Let’s figure out what the signs are and how to understand, if a girl from a mail-order bride website loves you or your wallet?

What Are Mail-Order Bride Websites?

Mail order bride websites connect men with women from all over the world. If you ever had a dream of meeting a bride from another part of the world, now you can easily do it. You get an account on the website, enter your bio and type in your preferences. Then via searching, you get matched with the best women that might suit you according to your wishes. All you have to do is start chatting and see where it will go. If you are lucky enough, you will find the love of your life and live happily ever after. If not – you are at risk of becoming a victim of a fraud and losing money.

Signs Of A Non-Trustworthy Website

Often mail-order bride websites have their own employees, who create profiles on the platform, act as if they are real brides who look for partners, but their main goal is to make you be on the website as long as possible, because it brings money to the platform and to them as well.

It’s quite a common story when a man meets a bride, decides to visit her in her home country and comes back devastated, because finds out that there is no bride at all.

To avoid such a disappointment, here are some useful tips to stay safe.

Start with reviews

When you decide to become a member of any mail-order bride websites, read the reviews first. Of course, each experience is unique, but if the website is suspected in fraud by a lot of people, that is the reason to get cautious.

In turn, if you had a positive or negative experience with any of the platforms, share it, so that fellow users can also get useful information for the future.

Watch Bride’s Language

If the girl is interested in your financial status or asks you to help her out, send some money, promises that she will pay you back – think twice before doing any of these things. Usually, in terms of use, the website warns that you should send any money to your potential bride. Remember that the mail-order bride website is for chatting and not for the financial support of someone you don’t really know.

Ask For Information

If you like a girl but are not sure, whether she is real, or her behavior makes you suspicious, ask her for the social network page or her number. If you are in a relationship with a woman for some time, it will be strange that she refuses to share this information with you.

So remember to register only on the well-reputed website and check out the person you are talking to. Plus, don’t offer financial help to someone you don’t know. And if you feel that you are being made to stay on the website, leave.

How to identify a romance scammer?

If you desire to meet a woman online but avoid mail order bride scams, you should know how to differentiate between girls with true intentions and ones looking for fun or money. Therefore, every person who starts interacting online should first get armed with the signs of a romance scammer. If you haven’t done that before and have some suspicions about your current interlocutors, consider the following fraudsters’ behavior characteristics and make the right conclusions:

• Professing love takes a minimum of time: it doesn’t last long for performers of Internet love scams before they start expressing strong emotions. They may say the words of love even if you’ve never had live communication and seen each other. Furthermore, liars may include questions regarding personal details to breach your credit card protection or use them to their benefit in any other way.
• Claiming money for numerous circumstances: try to switch off your emotions and use a rational mind when it comes to finances. In most cases, these are emergencies, severe health issues, and unbearable desire to see you face-to-face used in Russian brides scams to lure money.
• Convincing you to leave a dating platform: though it sounds natural to continue communication outside the mail order site, it’s also a warning sign to be aware of fraud. Women use a variety of tools to put much effort into receiving your email address and personal data through instant messaging, mobile phone, and other sensitive information that can be used against you. Furthermore, you pay less attention to the size of written messages and the details you send communicating via other messengers. Therefore, try to share only alternative email addresses and use communication tools that don’t contain your personal information.
• Planning to meet numerous times but having hundreds of excuses instead: a scammer always agrees with a person he or she wants to cheat. She would state her “true” desire to meet in person, but the range of reasons why it can’t happen is incredibly various too. If you experienced two or more cancellations of your date, there’s a sense to think twice.

10 Questions to ask a romance scammer

Sometimes, there’s no need to be a detective to identify Internet romance scams. You can come to the right conclusion about a person if you know how to outsmart a romance scammer. Could you think answers to a couple of questions may tell you lots of information about your potential romantic partner? In fact, you’ll just try to learn a person of your interest better by asking the following questions:

• What’s your ful name? Classic names are usually chosen in dating site scams, and you’ll spot reluctance to answer this question from the woman’s side if she doesn’t want to be sincere with you.
• What’s your family like? Talking high about marriage and family is spotted almost in every mail order bride scam, but you’ll spot hesitation to tell much about relatives and won’t hear any details or factual information.
• What’s your favorite restaurant/ place for a stroll in the city? It often happens scammers lie about their true location and know little about a place they claim to live in. If you get a generic answer instead, it’s time to continue the interrogation further.
• What’s your zodiac sign? Naturally, the date of birth in the profile of a person hidden behind romance scams is fake, so you may catch her red-handed if she fails to answer correctly.
• Can we have a video call? People interested in relationships would appreciate this offer even feeling shy at the beginning, but scammers will find hundreds of reasons to avoid it.
• Will you call me? Criminals never undertake serious steps towards their potential victims and would ask you to make a call or show how uncomfortable it can be to do that.
• What’s your social media page? None of them will ever share that, but even if one dares to do that, this page will remind an account of a robot rather than a real person.

Reporting a romance scammer: what to include?

Internet love scams can be of various types, and the way to report them will depend on your personal situation. The most common way to mail order bride platforms is to contact customer support and notify about a potential scammer. You can send a link to the profile or enter the member ID as well as provide proof of Russian marriage scams accusations. The website security team will undertake all the necessary actions to solve the problem and prevent users from fraud.