Business next door to fraud. How Ukrainian marriage agencies deceive foreigners into parting with money (INVESTIGATION)

How Ukrainian marriage agencies deceive foreigners into parting with moneyAll girls dream of a prince, but not all of them stop searching for him with age. An entire industry with a complex system of relationships and outstanding cash flow has managed to grow up on women’s desire to find their “foreign princes”.

Ukrainian girls look for relationships with foreigners for various reasons. Someone wants fresh impressions, someone dreams of a beautiful romance. However, the great majority still dreams of marriage which would solve all financial problems and give a ticket to a new life abroad. Foreigners, in their turn, are not against getting acquainted with Ukrainian women. Some look for a beautiful and house-proud woman, others – for an obedient and socially disadvantaged one.

Demand breeds supply – a link appeared between them. This is a dating industry. It specializes both in virtual communication and meetings in real life. This business is among five growth rate leaders in the world.

That is evidenced by a large number of ads in which staff is invited to marriage agencies. There are a lot of advertisements that offer women of all ages to find their soul mates abroad.

What scheme does this “dating machine” work in? We decided to get a job in one of these marriage agencies and to study the situation from the inside.

We replied for a vacancy of Golden Couple Marriage Agency in Kyiv.

Golden Couple
Contact person:        Vadym
Web-site:       goldencouple.com.ua
Golden Couple Marriage Agency finds a potential eligible suitor for our clients and deals with a case of his arrival. In the meantime a girl (a client) has time to learn a language. All our clients have the opportunity to come to our offices in Kyiv, Zhytomyr, Bila Tserkva, where each of them is supported with a personal computer and translator with high English knowledge helping in communication with a man. The agency helps in search and select of a candidate. We organize a wedding.
We are for more than 6 years in the market; our aim is to help people from different countries to get acquainted for making families in future. Women feeling not comfortable with standard relations in our country reach out to us. We also help the girls desiring to meet their future husband in a social developed country.
We consider our job to be done well, if our clients having met on our sites get married.
This firm looks for customer managers, site administrators, and call-centre operators. We sent a resume for the position of a translator.
English translator
UAH15000, advances, gift money, bonuses! Top profiles! 
Company:   Golden Couple
Contact person:    Vadym
Job type:      full-time employment, part-time employment, distance work, work for students
Job description:
Golden Couple International Marriage Agency needs an English translator. All sites! Real clients whom you can communicate with and who will help you.
The agency works with all large international dating agencies.
Experienced translators can choose the sites (Svadba, Dream-Marriage, Natashaclub, Charming, Hanuma, Nataly Marriage, Jump4love, Romance, Loveme (Afa), Mariya-club, Ukrainiandiamonds, Find-bride, Bridge-of-love, Veronikalove, LadaDate, Star-marriage, Victoriabrides, Loveinchat and others)

Interviews and training are held on Skype. The latter began with a detailed story: how that works and how much it costs.

Therefore, there is a platform that works in with clients. Each of them goes to it from his or her side; the men go to the accounts from one site, the women and their translators – from another. In our case, the foreign clients used the services of Anastasiadate.com, the women and translators – Svadba.com. Golden Couple’s role was to register the clients on the latter – the women cannot create an account on Svadba.com on their own, only through an intermediary. Those, in their turn, ensures that the users are only real people who, moreover, meet a certain level of the men-users’ expectations.

The structure of the platform is as follows:

A man → Anastastiadate.com → AnastasiaCompany ← Svadba.com ← Golden Couple ← A translator ← A woman

The men’s accounts on Anastasiadate.com are cross-platform that is they can communicate with the women from different sites. The men choose the women to talk to according to the certain criteria – “Asians”, “black women”, “sex”, “date”, “marriage”, etc.

However, not all clients of the sites are ready to spend hours communicating in chat rooms, and some cannot communicate because of low foreign language level. In addition, the main communication is hold at the night time in Ukraine (the difference between Kyiv and New York is 7 hours). Therefore, the women use the services of translators.

Officially, the women use the services of the translators. But in fact the whole communication is hold independently from the clients. By the way, there were four people; three of them are men, in our training group. After training they will correspond with the clients from the women’s accounts and on their behalf.

The translator’s task is to interest as many men as possible being the first when writing them, and then to involve them in a long-term communication.

Initially, for drawing attention chat bots are used that send the same message to a group of men.

However, not all users are involved in communication. The site clients have to buy credit for the right to use all its functions (letters, gifts, calls, chat). If the total purchase is $500 or more a man gets a VIP online status. They are the most desirable customers for translators. VIPs can potentially become “long-term clients” – the men communicating on a regular basis. 80% of translators’ earnings accrue to that category with serious intentions, the other 20% – to all other clients. There are most Americans and Germans among the “long-term clients”.

Svadba.com website clients’ aim is to get married, so they look for the men with the proper information in the profile. Moreover, communication on the topic of sex is not welcomed, as any vulgarity.

A translator is paid for communication with the clients according to the wage scale:

Svadba

For a translator For a translator
with a monthly balance with a monthly balance
up to $500 over $500
An ingoing letter – $0.5 An ingoing letter – $0.6
1 min chat – $0.04 1 min chat – $0.048
1 hour – $2.4 1 hour – $2.88
5 men in chat parallely 5 men in chat parallely
1 hour – $12 1 hour – $14.4
1 min video-chat – $0.08 1 min video-chat – $0.096
1 hour – $4.8 (1 man in chat) 1 hour – $4.8 (1 man in chat)
1 min camsher- $0.12
1 hour – $24 (5 men in chat) 1 hour – $28.8 (5 men in chat)
1 min camsher – $0.12 1 min camsher – $0.14
1 hour – $7.2 1 hour – $8.6
1 min call – $0.16 1 min call – $0.2
1 hour – $9.6 1 hour – $12

 

Everything is clear with the chat correspondence. But how is a video chat hold, if a translator communicates instead of a woman?

During a video chat a man sees a woman, but did not hear her. The woman previously comes to the agency’s office, where a half-hour video is taken, which is transmitted as a stream from a webcam through a special program. “Camsher” is almost the same, but, unlike the previous case, the man also stream with his camera.

Communication with a real client of the site begins when a man orders a video call, and when both can see and hear each other. Such meetings are agreed in advance, for a few days.

To avoid confusion, the translators have special forms by means of Google document, where they record about what and when they communicate with the client. Thus, even if another translator keeps on communicating with him, he will know the back-story and will not betray himself.

The ultimate aim of the agency is the woman’s marriage, so the translators try to bring the man to a personal meeting (it is paid by the man). If that happens, the women also use their services, but as simultaneous interpreters.

It also should be added that Golden Couple Agency invites girls with model looks, whose photos can be used in their clients’ accounts. Also professional photo sessions are organized for the clients.

Conclusion: a client of dating sites risks after the months-long and rather expensive communication never to see a real person and not to enter into correspondence with a real woman. Instead it he communicates with a “collective image” created with the efforts of translators and models.

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