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Ukrainian Mail-Order Brides: Part 1

Inside The Secret World Of Mail-Order Brides

April 26, 2011

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That isn't to say that it's a scam, but here's the other thing that happens before the plane to Odessa or Kiev or Mariupol ever takes off: Guys spend thousands of dollars communicating with women online, using an arsenal of tools like email, chat, virtual gifts, and phone conversations. As soon as you log on to the site, women entreat you, several at a time, with messages like, “Hello dear I'm a girl tale ))!!!! want to know this tale ??!!!”

At breakfast one morning in the hotel, Hal, a defense lawyer, confided in me that he'd been on at least a dozen sex tours to Rio. (Hal also explained in detail how he learned to spot prostitutes. There are whole systems of signals and fixers on the ground. He spaced out his appointments during the day to have as much sex as possible on his trips.)

This came about over an assertion by another guy on the tour that he received 50 emails per week, a number he thought was inflated. Anyone with an account basically receives a steady flow of unsolicited emails, more if you're a frequent user; but the guys rarely see it that way. If a girl says, “Hello! Do you want passion dance with pretty girl?” then she wants to "passion dance" with just him. Larry Cervantes, Anastasia Date's PR guy in Moscow, told me that email is its largest source of revenue, followed by live chat.

The high profits of a shady business

Membership to Anastasia Date is pay-for-play: Credits cost anywhere from $0.40 (if you buy 1,000) to $0.80 (if you buy 20). Each email costs 10 credits to send and 10 to open, which means a single email exchange costs no less than $8 for the guy. Anastasia Date claims to exchange 500,000 to 1.7 million emails daily — which sounds insane — but given that there are 25,000+ women on the site and a million guys, it's probably feasible. Exactly how many of the emails are factory-produced and how many are written by women for a specific guy is a matter of conjecture, but more than likely the majority are turned out for mass dissemination. They're all basically some variation of: “My name is Natalia. I am writing to you now as you seem to be a man who may fulfill my life with your brightness... I will be waiting for you.”

It's dicey. Not because the women aren't real — they are — but because the first thing you find out when you get over there is that almost nobody ends up spending time with people they meet online. Women don't pay to use the service; in fact, they get their photographs taken for free, and they're given access to computers and translators for chat and email, so you can bet that part of the agreement is that they're strongly encouraged, if not required, to email and chat as much as possible.

Email and chat are, in other words, mostly for rubes. I burned through 500 credits mostly responding to vague emails from a stunning brunette living in Kiev. I almost made plans to go see her, but only rookies, I would learn, skip the planned programming to meet women in other towns. There are simply way too many women at the three social events, or “socials,” planned by Anastasia Date. The programming is elaborate in a surreal way. On my tour, the three socials included a successful attempt to break the Guinness Book of World Records mark for most kisses in one minute and a full-on beauty pageant complete with a bikini contest, in addition to the main attraction, which is several hundred women who came specifically to meet you.

Sound too good to be true? Discover the dirt behind the Ukranian mail-order-bride business...