experience

Online “Mail Order Brides” Scam or Real?

You may have seen the ads, “meet the love of your life, Russian girls waiting for you”, or “Philipina princesses looking for their prince” etc. These ads selling directories of young women looking to correspond with marriage minded American men. For a fee you receive access to a website that contains profiles of hundreds of girls with their photos and short biographies. The quality of these sites run the gamut from slick professionally produced portfolios to the most amateur collection of photographs slapped up on a blog. Are they worth the money? Does anyone actually meet the woman of their dreams by buying a subscription to one of these sites?

There has been countless horror stories in the press about mail order brides from hell, an unsuspecting man finds a young woman on one of these pages whom he believes to be his perfect mate and arranges for her visit to America only to be met by a drug addict, a prostitute or even a transsexual. Horror stories abound of young women coming to a new land expecting to meet a man who has arranged their visit only to find not a husband in waiting but a life of prostitution or worse.

With all the risks involved why would anyone even consider taking a chance on one of these sites? Aren’t there enough eligible single woman here in America waiting to meet their Mister Right? The numbers certainly suggest that this is the case but if you talk to men for any length of time you find the American male is thoroughly disenchanted with the modern American woman and seeking someone beyond the borders is a “Hail Mary” pass for many of them to find someone who is not jaded or too materialistic or too demanding, etc. The women come from countries for the most part where they are indeed second class citizens and many of them see Western Television and the images implanted leave them the impression that the grass is greener on our side of the fence. Many of these girls know someone who has already met and married an American man and has had a positive experience to convince them that this may be a route to take.

Now the question is, if you are so inclined to look beyond our shores in search of a mate, how do you figure out which site is worth subscribing to? Some of these sites carry hefty price tags so on top of avoiding scam sites you want to make sure you get a site that has a large number of legitimate, available young women who have been vetted by the site’s owners who have gauged the sincerity of the girls. One of the best ways is to consult friends who have already taken this step and get their recommendations but many men are in fact sensitive about this, the stigma of resorting to a mail order bride service to some is demeaning. Another more anonymous way is to search the forums online that exist that have active discussions about these and other dating activities, although there will be many people hawking their own sites on these forums there will be more real, usable information available here than anywhere else. You might also decide what kind of woman you’d like to meet, ie. By nationality, religion, activity or other criteria and explore the internet for forums and message boards dedicated to these specific categories.

I have known both men and women that have met people through these services and their experiences are mixed, some have been very happy with the people they met others, not so. A friend, a lawyer who works way too many hours to have a social life bought a subscription to a Russian site, met a young lady online, sponsored her and the day she arrived she slipped out the other exit at the airport to meet her waiting Russian gangster boyfriend. Others have had more luck, in particular many friends of mine have established relationships with young Latina women from Colombia, Ecuador or the Dominican Republic having met them through these online services and have gone onto enjoying fulfilling relationships with loving, family oriented women. So the answer is do your research, query friends who have done it, scour the internet for forums and stay away from sites that you are unable to gain any feedback on. You may just find the woman of your dreams.