SCAM BUSTERS®

"Am I writing to a scammer? Please help me!"

"I think I am being scammed! Please help me to figure this out!!!"

"This sounds too good to be true. I wonder if this girl is for real. Can you help?"

This is the type of requests we receive daily. Since this seems to be the most common request for assistance, we decided to put together this ScamBusters® plan.

"THE PLAN"

The vast majority of victims come across the translation agency scams originating from Ukraine, or the so-called "visa-and-tickets" scam originating from Russia and Ukraine (for the full list of all scams, check out our Classification of Scammers). 

The good news about those scams is that they are fairly easy to detect, because they are almost always use stolen or bought photos and pre-written letters.

This time-tested ScamBuster® plan can weed out 99% of such scams in 3 easy steps.

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Checking the Internet to see whether the letters you are receiving have already been used in scams before. This step alone will weed out about 80% of the scammers. Cost: $52

Step 2: Performing an Address Bureau Check to verify this person's full name, date of birth, and the latest registered address. That will confirm that you are writing to a real person, not a fictitious story character. Costs: $75 in Russia, $85 in Ukraine.

Step 3: Performing a flower delivery to this person's place of residence in order to take a picture of the recipient (with the flowers). If all other checks have failed to indicate any scam, this last part will provide you with an opportunity to verify that the person on the pictures is actually the person who is corresponding with you. 

We have been using this plan for the last 1.5 years, and so far it has proven 98% effective against the regular, garden-variety visa-and-tickets scams and 95% effective against the fake translation agency scams.

Step 1 - Online Check ($52)

GOAL: 

Majority of scammers use pre-written letters, at least at first. Very few scammers take the time to start writing personalized letters for the first 2 or 3 weeks of correspondence. The good news is that most of those pre-written letters sooner or letter wind up on the various black lists and anti-scam sites. 

So, in Step 1 of our plan, we will make a research on the Internet, trying to find out whether the letters they receive can be found by searching various online sources. If the letters you received have already been published somewhere else, you will be able to see who used them in the past, and for what purpose.

COSTS AND CONDITIONS:  

The cost of the check is $52 for letters in English and $72 for letters in languages other than English. 

The results of the check are usually available in 4-8 hours, but during the school semester (when everyone working in our office is also attending college) it may go over that, especially for letters written in languages other than English. 

Usually the results are available no later than the next business day. 

WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

You will need to provide us with 5-10 of this person's letters. 

The best letters for this search are the letter from the first two weeks of correspondence. Other good letters are those where he/she is first discussing the visa and travel costs, or letters from travel or translation agencies.

If you are at the very beginning of your correspondence and only exchanged 2-3 letters, we cab still run the check, but the "research material" is limited and may not produce enough results. 

WHAT WE WILL DO:

We will take the letters you submitted, spend 1-3 hours researching the Internet, and collect all meaningful matches to already published scam reports that the search engines will be able to provide. Once we are done, we will either:

• send you a report that will have in it all the information that we were able to collect for you. 

                                                                    or 

• send you a letter announcing that the search was not able to produce any results (that is a very good thing! it means that the chances of this lady NOT being a scammer just increased a whole lot). At that point, if you don't plan to perform any other checks, you can request your full refund of the payment.

READY FOR THE STEP ONE?  

CLICK HERE TO BEGIN.

STEP 2- ADDRESS BUREAU CHECK

Address Bureau Check is one of the most effective tools against both the visa-and-tickets and the fake-translation-agency scammers. This step alone will weed out about 98% of the scammers. It is VERY rare for those types of scammers to provide any real information about any person involved in a scam, to avoid retaliation from the victims of the scam.

We put it as Step number two because it takes several days to complete, it is not available in all the regions of the country, and it is more expensive, while Step 1 is much faster, less expensive way to start searching. However, some of people who contact us request that the Address Bureau Check was performed before Step 1. That is fine with us - there is no right or wrong order in which to perform those three steps.

To order an Address Bureau Check, visit our Quote Request page.

 STEP 3 - FLOWER DELIVERY 

This service allows you to verify the validity of your penpal's address and provides a good opportunity to obtain a photo of the addressee.

Many people want to start with this service, and to jump right into checking whether the photos match the real person, believing that if the photos match the real person, then all their worries will be over.. Although there is nothing wrong with performing the steps in any order one wishes, we actually recommend performing the first two listed steps first because:

• If complaints on the Internet show that your penpal (or his/her doubles) has scammed or tried to scam other in the past, the fact that the photos match gets overshadowed by 
• If your penpal is indeed a real person but by accidentally or intentionally made a misspelling while writing you his or her address, the results of the check will be misleading. In the cases when the addressee actually lives at the address listed on her paperwork, their Address Bureau Check performed in the previous step would remove all doubt about the correct address spelling, and minimize frustrating setbacks.

Here are the prices:

• a phone call to the recipient (if the phone is provided) to agree upon the time of the delivery or a telegram to the address you provided
• delivery of the present to the agreed upon address
• timely confirmation of the results of the delivery

PHOTO SERVICE: $15.00 (either the delivery personnel will make a photo of the recipient or make a visual comparison with the photograph you provide)

OTHER SERVICES: $20.00 (optional) If you need other services, such as:

• personal visit to the address by the florist to verify that the address is correct
• research of home phone information through the city's paid phone directory (usually it is done to contact the recipient prior to the delivery to verify the address and the time of the delivery)
• passport check before the present is released to the recipient
• detailed description of the events during the delivery of the present
• additional photos of the building where the recipient lives
• other services that you may consider necessary...

GIFTS: approximately $8 per rose. We recommend sending 1-11 roses. Do not send an even number of flowers (Russian superstition is that the even number of flowers is a bad luck)

If the address is a fake, you receive $15 back for the unused photo comparison service.