Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Russian Expert Cites 99 Percent of Internet Brides are a Scam

Romance scams happen on the Internet, daily. Here is a story, which indicates that despite "Internet legends" not all of them start in Nigeria.

Mosnews (a Russian publication) reports:

All online dating sites suffer from dating scammers, 99 percent of the emails are hoaxes designed by professional Internet criminals says Elena Petrovathe founder of Russian Brides Cyber Guide, Prweb.com Website reports.

Internet criminals use sophisticated scripts and custom-built software to contact thousands of male users of Internet personals, creating fake Russian women identities and requesting money for airplane tickets.

Link, here.

Interestingly enough, they mentioned one group making a million dollars off these scams AND that in one instance involving "Russian brides," it was an American that was behind the scam.

While I was reading this story - I happened to see another one that claims that a senior Russian prosecutor claims that corruption in Russia amounts to 240 billion a year, read here.

Russian organized crime seems to have it "claws" in a lot of illicit activities - including cybercrime. The U.S. Department of Justice published a document going into great detail about it, here.

I started this post with the comment that despite "Internet legend" not all fraud originates in Nigeria. I will close with that all of it doesn't come from Russia either. In fact, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, there are more malicious websites "hosted" in the United States than anywhere else in the world.

Of course, I could go on and on about this - but the bottom line is that Internet criminals can come from anywhere and so can "good people," who are doing their best to fight it.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I had a friend find a wife through the Internet but no cash was exchanged and he met her through chat rooms. Their internet relationship lasted a good year and a few months together before they tied the knot.

They both took care making sure that each was a real person before they met.