The funniest line I ever see in association with dating an FSU lady is the one "smart a" uses above.
"AFA don't do any background checks on any of the women."
People like him assume that the agencies can provide a wholesome and verifiable product for his risk free consumption.
These girls are PEOPLE. Because this is REAL LIFE. And people can be honest or dishonest, well intentioned or not so much. What kind of background checks are you looking for?
Do you want them to hire a team of detectives to follow them around? Maybe have a team of researchers comb through official records?
You have to have some people skills and some common sense, whether meating people in person or writing letters.
Good example: If you are NOT a good looking guy - a little old, a little pudgy - and a gorgeous lady writes to you out of the blue, sending sexy pictures of herself and claiming that she has fallen in love with you through a few letters - chances are she is pulling something on you.
NEVER fall in love with anyone OR send money - until you have met that person - face to face to see how she LOOKS when she is professing her love. Always be sceptical until you have met her and determined that the experience is making sense.
I should mention that bus rides between two cities are easily 4 - 5 hours. So especially in the case of Anastasia above - getting back to a town is never easy.
Sure you can get a public bus ticket or a train, cheap - but that is never easy, if you are a newby and don't know the language. All signs of course are written in cyrillic letters that you likely can't even sound out.
A private taxi can be hired = but that can st you back $250.
The prefered way for a newby to get from one city to another on a first trip without having to figure out the trains or busses - is to share a taxi with three other guys going the same way and back to the same city. $60 is easier to stomach than $250.
The point I was highlighting about AFA not doing any background checks is, I think, important.
AFA don't verify to see if the Girls' real name is what she writes down when signing up to their 'honest' dating site.
AFA 'photoshop' ALL of their photos of the women. Why do this?
Jetmba, 'promotes' AFA while bagging Anastasia socials. I think you will find on Youtube, a video of an Anastasia social.
What it looks like to me is there in a lot of nice women there and the surrounding of the venue is well done.The women look real to me.
So, if people believe Jetmba is telling the truth about AFA, after nearly 10 years of Roadrunning, he is a perfect example that AFA is either not good enough or the problem is him..
smart a: (or jamie1964): I have BEEN to AFA Romance Socials AND to Anastasia Romance Socials.
As a person who has done so I think I am qualified to compare the two.
Have YOU been to both? Of course not.
And who says not getting married is a problem? I LIKE what I am doing. I don't CHOOSE to be married yet. As disappointing as it is to you - and as much as you want to spin it - I'm loving every minute of this.
Its YOU who is still ctying over what happened to you in Nikolaev in 2008 or 2009. You need to get over it and get on with life.
The websites, agencies, and tour companies are not “pro-active” they don’t do a thorough check of anyone. At best they are only “reactive’ maybe doing something if enough guys complain about the girl. I think the main reason they remove a girl, is simply because she got caught.
You really need to be extra careful when attending a social, because that’s where the pros come out to feed!!
Lonelyranger1701: I think its LESS likely to be taken at a Romance Social because you get to sit across from the woman and look her in the eye. Much more difficult to lie when looking someone in the eye than with all the elaborate schemes of letters.
You KNOW the girl actually exists. And this girl, who's face you are viewing is ABSOLUTELY the same one you are coimmunicating with (not somebody who might be a sweaty old fat MAN writing the letters for an agency).
I would say Romance Socials are much less likely to yield scammers than letter writing is.
I sincerely appreciate all your participation on this thread. Your contribution is great for novices like me. I would want to make a sincere request. Some of us have had positive experiences and some of us have had negative experiences and those experiences have shaped our perspectives. None of those perspective are bad or good. So I would like you to share all of them and request you not to bash others by saying that their viewpoint is wrong. What may work for one may not work for the other.
Agencies or websites are here to make money as they are running a business based on pure economics of demand for the girls from FSU. Few of these websites and agencies do Photoshop the girls heavily . I think their viewpoint is... give the customer what the customer wants. The customer in the west is looking for young, gorgeous beautiful girl and so the agencies are doing that. These agencies do whatever possible in their books to market their girls. We men need to be careful not to fall into that trap. One way out is to request a skype chat, internet chat or ask her for a personal video or anything else where you can see her etc. If she cant , let her go.
Its a critical point that when dealing with some of these pay per letters websites, that how do we know are we actually speaking to girls and not some one else . That is a great question and we need to figure that out. . Maybe some experienced in this forum can give their suggestions.
When i spoke to AFA office, I asked them how were they getting these girls. The manager seemed pretty honest and told me upfront that they advertise locally and get girls to come to their events. Other thing they do is that they buy the girls profiles form the local agencies and put them on their website . After the profile is owned by AFA, a person from their local office will initiate the contact with the girl on the phone and do the translation whenever a guy sends her an email. So each and every letter on most of the websites is read by the local agency . I don't see anything wrong in buying the profiles. It's just the data and I am sure before they spend money they go through their own criteria on what data to buy. The AFA guy also did tell me that all the Social event does for you is to meet the girls and get few names and then correspond with her . So one should not have false belief that you can just go and meet a girl and then find the right one in just one event . That ain't happening and that is why the business model of going through two tours a year can be very pricey for some.
I feel background check in FSU is not like the western countries where you can do a check based on id and social security. I think background check will provide you with just basic data about here name, address, email etc and that I feel agencies do verify by asking the girl for her passport. Just because a girl is verified that doesn't mean she isn't a scam artist .You can only figure that out by meeting her. There may be few bad apples with good ones. That is the nature of the beast.
I do agree with Jet that its easier to know that the women is real when you meet her face to face and if you have good intuition and are not too much carried away by her beauty. That is why few wise people mentioned in this forum that you should know your strengths and your weaknesses. Its seems that some of the guys who go there are so overwhelmed with the beauty that they forget everything else and get taken for a ride. These girls are way mature and smarter than their western counterparts.
Now every approach either using agency or online site has its pros and cons . Nothing is going to be fool proof even if you met a girl in your own country. But atleast we can increase the odds for success. To do that on needs to understand the inner working of these firms and understanding of local culture.. I would encourage all the experienced people in this forum to share with us that knowledge.
Please correct me if I am wrong. I know there are lot of experienced people in this forum. So I would appreciate them to come forward and share their perspective too.
As to making sure a girl exists,,, Yes, of course, if she is sitting across the table she is real. Guys waste a lot of time and money writing to someone unknown,,, could be anyone. I think most of the girls I wrote to were real,, but were they writing the letters?? Several of them didn’t know simple things about me, such as;,,, my name, sisters and brothers, parents still alive, what I do for a living, etc, etc!! All things we were supposed to have written about many times.
Now for the lying part,,,,,,,,, eye to eye,,, before and after a kiss, in the morning, looking me in the face with a happy smile on her face, they can lie!! I sometimes thought it would be funny, to have a little bell on the table,,, and to ring it once for every lie they tell. I don’t think it would take too long to be kicked out of an restaurant! (while dating,, not at a social)
At my Aweb social back in 1998, they had several working girls there. I spotted them working at a nearby restaurant,,,, working at the entrance! We also had one girl everybody said was a professional,, a ringer! She had the attention of most of the guys there. Everyone said to steer clear of her,,, but she still had them tripping over her.
In Nikolaev AFA actually had a sign out in front of the hotel - a huge kiosk sized sign that said in English something like "Start a new future. Meet someone serious. Marry and move to the USA." It said SOMETHING like that. Certainly not those exact words but (I think) close.
I saw the sign when I went out and there is a photo of John Addams - AFA founder standing next to the sign on AFAs website.
Regarding working girls - way back in 2003 when I went to a Romance Social in Odessa - it was NOT an AFA Romance Social - it was done by European Connections - a company that no longer does them.
Anyway there was this gorgeous tall blonde woman - I mean even by Ukrainian standards this woman was beautiful. REALLY a 15 on a scale of 1 to 10.
I approached her as did - I think every other man there - but she was actually working as a translator. Translators can date too - so I asked her if she was interested in meeting me. She was one of two women on that entire trip who didn't want to go out with me when asked. But to this day I will never forget what she looked like.
After returning to the US - I was messing around on the computer and I found a site called Odessa Escorts or something like that - and there was this incredibly stunning girl - unmistablable and available for something like $300 per hour. I couldn't believe it.
Even more amazing in here spiel about what she would do and what she wouldn't do sexually - she wrote that she was looking for a special man to get married to and hopefully to go away with him and live in another country. I was amazed that an escort saw this as a venue to find a serious husband.
I spend hours every week looking through escort sites and modeling photos for girls I’ve dated or might think about dating. You would be surprised at how many I’ve found!
In a country that almost embraces exploitation,,, a girl down on her luck can find supplement income around the corner of any dark alley,,, or main street.
aulx, the one i liked most was lucky lovers" it had its players but it also seemed to have a reasonable amount of sincere compared to others i tried.
its not free to males as it is to women, this seems to be the normal theme with these.
i met some really neat girls there tho.
you will also find many woman will not go near agencys, they do have bad reputations over there so these sites do hold some numbers..
i didnt focus on citys,, if was more of areas, i wanted a none city girl,, city girls in my eyes are just problems..
this made things harder for me for most FSU girls are citys girls.
russia was my pick,, if you look at their many citys away from ukraines borders, the agency thing becomes very minimal compared to ukraine(no city in ukraine has not got one)
i figured no agencys, less scamming,,,,, scammers and such seem to rid the backs of agencys from what i saw(not always).
personally with all i know now i would hit Khabarovsk area(eastern russia) the surrounding areas out to a1000 mile.
this area was very interesting, i was surprised how many girls from this region that have moved abroad compared to any other area i went to.
strangely we have many in NZ from here,,, japan also and of cause the US,,,,,, the area has gone through a huge population loss since communist times.
i think the only agency's close to there is in Vladivostok, but actually i would be surprised if theres no agency in Khabarovsk.
i have a interest in old battle grounds and cold war stuff so i only took on girls in areas i wanted to visit.
this way to me it wasn't a wasted journey, i made sure to get something from the trip no matter what (thats the slarv in me)
for this reason i never went back twice to the same area.
capability's,, some people can move through very foreign country's with ease even with the language diff no matter how dangerous the place is, some are girl magnets, some know when trouble is shaking his hand, or is more clever than the copper trying to shake him down......
then theres others who seem to get attacked or mugged, and more then once, too easy at giving cash to takers, or find them selves to afraid to leave there hotels or apartments because dealing with the outside world of a very foreign place is just to different for them, or are just overly desperate to have a girl around him....
its easy to see out of these two groups who would win dealing with agencys, scammers, pro-daters or general time wasters quickly.
in ukraine you have a rather large dodgy industry set around the sincere, myself i just couldnt be bothered with it and as i said i had bigger places to go.
you have to remember a huge amount of people there really dont give a toss you have flown 48 hours, dealing with four airports , finished with greasy taxis drivers and just had a huge fuck around with telephones or figuring out where a internet cafe is(let alone knowing the ins and outs of foreign computers and last but not least, the bucks spent getting there just to sit at some table with a hungry interpreter and half the time some agency time waster..
this forum has showed these problems and characters again and again, there have been times i can identify to everything above.
supermarket girls will short change you because they know you are a foreigner, (such a pitiful amount of cents, silly girls but i never worried about it) i even had a 70-75 year old lady do a runner with my change from a fiver,,, how did she know i was foreign, i didnt open my mouth??
ha" browsing the shop is not normal, nor was holding back allowing other customers do their thing at the counter for a male of such age, so she new the icecream boy was different, or was it also the old denim jacket and jandals(thongs) i was wearing.
theres so many things that makes you different there, bait for another.
i arrived in ukraine mostly with older clothes thinking of blending in straight away")) how i was a sore thumb to this world, the beggars were dressed better other then the greasy taxi drivers..
what i remember mostly was waking up some mornings thinking, shit" its another day of finding food, where do i start.
i learnt very quick which cafes were for me, having english menu's or the bistro types, fill up your plate and pay at counter types,, these were never that easy to find,,,,,,,,,,,,,, another tip, watch their salads(beetroot what ever) they love putting in stinky little fish bits, no not anchovies as we now,, stale fish salads are not a new zealand thing bloody hell..
paulx if you dont do a tour as jet suggests for your first trip, go over with a friend,, this takes a lot of pressure off you and stops boredom been a prominent feature if you are there for some time, i am glad i took a friend on that first trip, i dealt if i would have laughed that much otherwise.
it was a fantastic adventure for a country guy as me from a little secure country where lifes about fishing diving hunting and laughing,, she is very cool, what a beautiful heart she has.
i really did think i would have seen more of russia, finding her isnt actually that easy.
the far east was a bit of a side show for me really, i wanted to look at the hunting and she was there interested in me,,,, but the hunting style in this region disappointed me greatly,, the russian way of doing things from the paperwork to dispatching is not our style here(not very sporting one could say)
you will find this kind of strange way of doing things is right though the fsu, i think it has ties to the old communist era and a dollar to be made.
i also think most guys are on a time thing in their search over there, they have themselves a given time to do this mentally, they may not even know this, there comes a time when the travel problems, the ordeal of it all would override the search for a girl.
with me i really wasnt sure how much more i was going to ta
Thanks lonelyranger and Jetmba for your valuable Information. I think girls know when they go to Local events like AFA or Anastasia that men are willing to give them gifts or take them to expensive restaurants. More so Tony Bochene clearly says that these agencies are openly advertising that gringos are coming to town, come and wipe them off. .. which was kind of funny. As a result few of the pros are also coming to such event who will go after the novices who fall easily into the trap. So do your homework well.
Jet your story about he Odessa blonde escort is pretty interesting and scary. I also heard a similar story from Tony in his videos where one of the guys ended up marrying a prostitute and after marriage he discovered hat he had got into. That's scary. I think in big cities there are more of such girls who are making easy money doing stripping and prostitution to make ends meet or make easy bucks. Jetmba if you are comfortable giving some stats for the benefit of all of us, I would want to know that how many AFA events you went to and how many girls you met there whom you actually pursued ( eg went back to Ukraine to meet them).
These are the scams i see so far. I will keep compiling the list of all scams till we have most of them figured out. Please add to the scam list here. Once we have big list , I can make a chit sheet of all scams that we all should be aware of. That is the one of the ways to manage the downside.
(1) For online dating sites, someone else is answering your letter/eamils on behalf of the girl and when you decide to visit her , the girl just disappears because she never truly existed in first place.
(2) Most online dating sites are buying girls data or profile form the local agencies. Some of these local agencies or the online dating site will steal the profiles of girls from other websites just to increase their profiles and then use some third party to answer there emails. This was verified by a guy who used these websites go their name and went on the Russian facebook (VK) and contacted the girls and they were surprised that their profile was on these online dating sites.
(3) Few Pay per letter websites blast members with mass emails so when you register your profile you will start getting tons of emails from beautiful girls..These emails are sent using standard email templates which look vey well written but are actually pre written by the translator with the input form the girl . I assume all the profiles on websites are also written in similar manner by translators. So please don’t go by the profile or introduction emails you receive on any online dating site.
(4) For online dating sites another scam is that girls are being paid by local agencies to write letters and hook the guys and when guys come here these girls disappear or act so unfriendly that the guys just leaves. Some of these girls may even be married and are just doing it for money and survival.
(5) Girls get a cut from the agency for everything the guy spends money on including , letter sent by guys, apartment rental, flowers and other fee and rentals. Some local agencies are unethical and some are ethical. What is the percentage, I don't know.
(6) Tony Bochene in his videos has openly exposed both AFA and Anastasia . He has 15 years expertise in this field and he was a consultant to both organizations and so he knows their inner game well. I also confirmed Tony's credibility with a immigration attorney , Gary Bala in the US who is a famous Immigration attorney for K1 and other family visas. I found Gary very knowledgeable and helpful. According t Tony, AFA and Anastasia don't keep the interest of the girl in mind as they are money driven and their customers are all men and so the women don't find such events to be reputable and good women don't want to go to these events anymore.
I am posting a link to Tony's videos. Feel free to go over them and give positive or negative feedback about his videos so when I speak to Tony I will question him with any feedback that you any have and then report on this forum.
How the scam works
http://tonybochene.com/blog/profile-verification
http://tonybochen e.com/video-more/our-scam-sites-agency-reviews
I feel majority of the girls are nice but over a period of time few have been corrupted by the local agencies who are exploiting the girls and encouraging them to follow unethical business practices. Its best to pay for online dating site where you pay straight fees (like fiance.com) so the agency has no incentive to scam.
Please add to the scam list or anything else that might be useful.
Paulx: Maybe a not so funny story. The girl I was engaged to from Mariupol - I met her at a Romance Social. But after getting serious with her I decided to do some checking and I found her up on a local Mariupol dating site. I was uspet of course and I asked her why she was on the site if she was serious with me. She was shocked that she was on the site as she said she had never signed up with them in the first place. She ended up visiting the agency twice and she took her mother the third time, demanding that he photos be taken down. She was not successful and wanted to get an attorney to help her. But in the course of talking they told her that her photo got a lot of attention and that men regularly wrote her letters, so she was quite protiable for them. She asked, if men were writing her letters then why did she never see these letters - and she was told that the AGENCY recieved the letters and wrote back correspondence for money on its own. She asked what would happen if any of these men ever came and wanted to meet her - and she was told that if a man showed interest and indicated he was coming to meet her that only THEN would they get in contact with her and ask her if she was available to meet some man.
Of course all of this upset both of us. And at one point - just so see what would happen I ordered her address from this company to see what I would get - for $10 they gave me her real street address.
Okay flash forward a few years after she and I had broken up - and I went to see her again. She told me of a job she had had - she worked for an agency writing these fake letters, for girls who's profile were up but were never actually getting the letters that were sent to them. Now SHE was the fake letter writer! She got 5 grievna (about 67 cents) for every fake letter she wrote. She wasn't very good at it - didn't produce them fast enough and eventually lost that job. But she ended up playing both sides of this agency scam game.
“Its best to pay for online dating site where you pay straight fees (like fiance.com) so the agency has no incentive to scam. “
Paulx,, that’s what I thought too,,,, but it’s so not true!! The biggest incentive,,, is to get YOU/US to their city!!! Money from renting apartments and hiring interpreters,, also,, they may have their own driver, so they will be getting a cut from that too!! Many agencies also charge a fee for meeting one of their girls! If that girl doesn’t show up you can get your money back,,, but she always shows up on the first trip,,,, but not always for the second trip. They always have plenty of other girls who are just dying to meet you.
Kiwi,,, I always try to blend in,,, black leather coat,, black shoes,,,, no smile in public. On my last trip or maybe the one before,,, I saw an older guy being led through a busy shopping mall by a young and pretty girl. She was grabbing him by the hand,,, almost dragging him behind, as he was struggling to keep up. He was wearing a colorful Columbia style jacket,,, stood out like a sore thumb!! I thought to myself,,, I hope I’ve never looked like that!
On my last trip, my reg hotel in Kiev was shut down. I came down in the elevator, the doors opened and there were 5 -6 guys in military type clothing standing in front of the doors. I kept the puzzled WTF look on the inside,,, then went down to the front desk to ask what was going on. The lobby was full of police and other military personal,,, dark green and Ukrainian blue uniforms. I asked the girl behind the counter what was going on? She said,,,, I,,,,, don’t know,, this is very unusual for a hotel. Their computers were down,,, they could not print a receipt, and everyone had to leave! They offered to reserve me a room at a better hotel at the same price. I said; I like this one,,, it has everything I need,,, can’t I stay?? Well,,, if you don’t need a receipt?? I guess not,,, and I paid for another day.
People were moving out of the hotel,, and it seemed like the soldiers were moving in? My first thought was,,,,,, these guys are going to the front lines somewhere,,,, and they’re getting a treat before they go??!! Prostitutes??!!
After returning home for awhile,,, I looked up the hotel online to see if they had reopened? Across their website it reads;,,, “we’re raided“!!! Raided?? Raided for what?? Drugs,, prostitutes,,,, black market?? If so,,, why didn’t they question me,,, they were taking statements from most of the people there?? I was a foreigner,, the most likely buyer of anything.
I need to find a new place to stay in Kiev that has everything I need. Restaurant, bar, internet, ATM, money exchange, grocery store nearby, and some nice scenery. A Jacuzzi would be nice too!! I’m not dependant on anyone that way,, I can come and go as I please!
with me i really wasnt sure how much more i was going to take of the share pain in the ass dealing with the day to day affairs over there.
i was definitely on a count down mentally of just having enough, never the girls but, they are fun.
the FSU can drain you, if its not the boredom, its the hassle of just getting things done.
@kiwi: I appreciate your posts here, and loved the story about the old lady doing a runner with your change. There's a Russian joke from the 19th century, about a cossack who was asked what he would do if he were Tsar. His answer, "grab five rubles and run as fast as I can!"
jet's unknowing encounter with a prostitute brings two things to mind:
1. In my home state here in the USA, I have a very kind lady friend from Russia via Ukraine. She became acquainted with a Russian expatriate (now living in the US) who managed to snag a well-to-do American husband, despite being neither particularly young nor beautiful. This woman confided to my friend that her career in Russia was prostitution -- but she never told this to her husband! How would he feel, if he knew?
2. jet's reading that the prostitute expected a paying customer might become her husband sounds shocking (or maybe just insane), but I suspect it's not unusual as it seems. Most of us western men seem to think that the women involved in the dating racket are either "sincere women" or "bad girls" -- but I have long believed that there are plenty of women who are actively involved in one or another kind of exploitation (like the "shopping girl" I spent an embarrassing amount of money on) who really hope that sooner or later, they'll meet the man they'll want to marry -- and why not profit along the way?
We're used to a western ideal of marriage based on romance (how much this is a reality in western countries is a separate question). But there are seemingly many thousands of FSU women who, even if they are looking for the "love of their life," are conducting this search in an impressively cold and calculating manner. I wouldn't say that these women are typical of their countries ... only that there seem to be plenty of them.
Boys, if you are heading in the direction of marriage to a woman from the FSU, keep your eyes open wide!
I'm not trying to 'spin' this conversation at all.
If you, jetmba, like what your doing, and what is that exactly?..Oh yeah, asking out Ukrainian women who are a 15 on a scale from 1-10..And then you find the woman on an Odessa escort site...Well, if you didn't pay the $300 per hour, you could have asked for it in 5 minute intervals..
You spent more hours flying over FSU airspace then a Cosmonaut...And you say your having fun doing it.
Let me guess here, when you started out in 2003, you were after the 20 year olds, now 10 years later you're STILL after 20 year olds..
In civilised society's, they call people like you a sexual predator..
Don't forget people, the women who attend the socials want to correspond with you via the interpreter, because this is how they make most of their money, and it's the interpreter who's writing to you..
But seriously, when you look at the AFA website, have a look at all the young model 'single' women on the photos.
Poor Jetmba see's this and thinks its real...
Jetmba cannot get a date in his own country but thinks he's a chance in the FSU countries, where the age difference is greater then 20 years..Huh?
Wow, now that's experience,right?
Are you sure she was really looking for a husband when working,,,, or just trying to boost her business?? I’ve seen a lot of working girls,,, and thought many times,,,, Oh wow,,, if only you weren’t a working girl.
I think her motive is to get guys to believe,,,, if I treat her well (more money) she could become my wife?!
@kiwi thanks for your informative post. I really appreciate the time and thought you put in
I found following points are valuable and thanks for filling them with interesting anecdotes.
- Agencies have bad reputation so some girls who know their game avoid using them
- Go for small cities as the girls may be less corrupted .
- Go where there are no agencies or have adventure in the uncharted territories.
- Have fun and enjoy the journey and just don't be too focused on the girls
- Don't be pressured by time when looking for a sincere, good girl
- Every person responds differently to same people and to same country. It depend on our openness to understand the culture
- Try to blend with the people
- Find the cafes and food places that meet your needs
- When going first time go with a friend
- Be positive
@ Jet I sincerely appreciate all your efforts and your perspective you give all of us. You have lot of experience and we all can benefit from it. The story about he girl you engaged is a story that shows how these agencies are corrupting the girls for an economic advantage. If you breed corruption anywhere, it will corrupt a few. Some women have strong values and wont get corrupted and others will.
@ Durak. I think the reason why the girls are cold, calculating and corrupt is because of the influence of the west. The local , small and big dating agencies are catering to west and are breading an environment for social and moral corruption is these countries. Who is to blame is a matter of personal opinion and depends on how far beyond one can look . I would want men in this forum who have been going to FSU for over 8 plus years to share with us , how was it back then compared to now and were the girls different back then.
@bowhunter. Thanks for the wonderful conversation I had with you on the phone. Few critical points you mentioned choose a small city, visit there and be open minded and enjoy the people, place and the culture.