I am an avid supporter of internet dating, having met my Russian speaking wife through internet dating. My full story of how I met my wife can be found HERE. I have now been married for 4 years to my Russian speaking wife from Ukraine. I have nothing but praise for both internet dating and also for Russian women. However it is necessary to warn that there are many scams out there and by my revealing stories of actual scams that took place, hopefully people using the internet to find their prospective partners will know what to look out for and will hence avoid getting caught by the same scams.

A couple of months ago I received a call from a friend of a friend. Lets just call this guy Steve to avoid embarrasment for him. Steve had heard that I was succesfully married to a russian woman and as he was currently speaking to some ladies on the internet he wanted some advice.

Steve was talking seriously to two ladies on the internet. The first was an American lady and the second a lady from Russia. "Which one would you choose?" he asked. I explained that this was a personal choice and that he should decide for himself.

Next was the famous question "I am leaning towards the Russian lady, what should my next step be?". I explained very nicely to the guy that he should arrange to travel to Russia to personally meet this lady and meet her family. Under no circumstances at all should he send her money until he has personally met her. All happy Steve thanked me for my advice and rang off.

Approximately a month later I get another call from Steve. Classic first statement " I know you advised me not to send any money but I went against your advice and sent her the money for the air ticket as I do not have the time to go to Russia myself."

"Ok" I thought and asked him when she will be coming over. Well this is the problem, he said. I have been contacted by her and she has been to the travel agent and has already got her air ticket and been issued with her visa and now the agent has advised her that unless she has sufficient spending money on arrival in South africa, The customs people would not allow her entry to the country.

Straight away I realised Scam. Firstly Russian and Ukranian people need visas for just about every destination in the world and secondly they need a host of supporting documents from the sponsor inviting them or alternatively they need hotel bookings etc if travelling on a tourist visa. However I did not really want to break this guys high hopes so I asked him if he could supply this girls russian telephone number in order that my wife could give her a call and just check some details for him.

"Oh no" he said " She comes from a very poor area and does not have a phone". Everybody in Russia has a phone! "Well I asked , Can we send her a email?" Again he replied " NO, she does not have a fixed email address and has to travel to the internet cafe in the next town everytime she needs to use internet to log onto the dating site".

I gently started to explain to this "Lovestruck" guy that all these things do not really add up and that he should really have a serious look at the situation and put out a few tests for himself.

Well needless to say it took a few conversations with this guy to convince him that all was a big scam and sure enough, the minute he started checking her, she suddenly dissapeared.

When all sounds too good to be true - it probably is not true.

When using dating sites always use a recommended site that double checks on their ladies listed. My recommendations can be found here .

Please realise that while there are many scam artists on the internet, there are ten times more genuine people there as well. If you use your head and just double check everything before rushing in, you will not fall foul to scams.