Scammer or just a little quirky?

[Whynot]

Hi folks -

I've swapped about 5 emails with 'Anna'.

I'd be interested in your opinions about whether or not she could be a scammer - there haven't been any requests for money etc thus far but each email comes with two photos and the layout looks the same each time.  I've checked her email address and it doesn't come up on any lists.  Maybe i'm just being paranoid!

Here's a copy of the latest email:

****BEGINS

Hello ******!!!!!!! Is very glad to see your letter. I each time am
glad when I see your letter! I receive good mood on all the day when I
read your letter!!!!!!! How at you has passed day??????????? How your
day? I want to learn you more and I would want that you too knew about
me more. I think that the more people know each other that the more at
them chance to construct the future! You agree???????? I wrote to you
that I very much like to prepare!!!!!!!!!! Many spoke me, that I have
huge abilities of work above kitchen. Basically, I very much like to
prepare for a dish from meat and it at me It turns out always well. As
I like to prepare for various pies. I invest all high temperature and
all energy in these dishes. Probably therefore it turns out always
well. Very much frequently I prepare for the friends and certainly for
favourite parents. When at me bad mood I very much frequently am on
kitchen and I can prepare for something tasty. Though I I to eat it is
rare. Simply to like me process of preparation of meal. Even when to
me I am sad frequently I sit on kitchen. I do to myself green tea and
I look in a window. At this time I frequently dream. And you like to
dream?????????? I think that if the person very strongly something
will want that at him all to turn out. I as think that if the person
will want the dream to carry out in reality that it will necessarily
come true!!!!!! You agree with me?????????????? In childhood I it has
been borrowed in gymnastics, I liked To play volleyball, basketball. I
till now very much love sports! I always to support myself in the good
form! I on a regular basis am engaged in aerobics and I adhere to a
healthy way of life. You know for me very difficultly To wake up early
in the morning and to go for work. But in one hour I feel well. You
know when at me in the morning good mood that day at me necessarily to
turn out successful!!!! And how you like to carry out your day?? I do
not ask you about your work! And that you like to do during day except
for your work! I would like to know it! I hope, that I not to you
became boring and that you will be to me and further to write! I think
that you very interesting and kind person!

I shall wait for your letter!!!!!!!!!!!
Anna!!!!!!!!!

**** ENDS

Thoughts welcome!

WN?

[Ravens9273]

What you have described is typical for scammers.
They send pictures with every email and most of the time the letters just ramble away.

There is not enough in this email to say for FACT it is a scammer. I did google a couple of phrases and nothing came up.
However you will know very soon if it is real or not. Scammers are not patient.
If scammer she will fall in love over next couple of letters and talk about coming to visit you.
If this is the case you will receive the "NEED MONEY FOR VISA" letter.
Then run for the hills.

As others here would suggest. Ask her specific questions. See if she answers. Ask for a phone number. See if she gives one and call her.
Most of the time scammers to not read your letters. They already have letters prewritten and just send you the next one in line. This is where you will see if your questions are answered.

Keep in mind with anyone you write to. If they ever mention visiting you and need help from you, 99.9% to 100% of the time it is a scammer. If they need your money they would never get visa to USA. The person would never meet requirements to come to USA if they cannot prove they can also afford the trip on their own.

[Gator]

Too early to decide, yet she seems sincere!  I trust you are writing more than one RW.  If so, why did you present her case?

Points suggesting she is not professional scammer:

-  Scammers usually are more accomplished with writing in English.
-  By the 5th email scammers are starting to express romantic feelings.
-  Anna is asking you specific questions and highlighting them with  ??? smileys.


Important considerations:

-  Does she answer your questions (scammers typically ignore most of them)?
-  Do her emails dovetail with your emails?
-  Has she given you her telephone number and asked you to call?  Most RW usually are ready by the 5th email for a call.  However, her English is not good so she may be reticent.  Call her with an interpreter.  Few scammers do telephone calls.

Some relevant background questions to evaluate scammer potential:

Her agency?
Who wrote first?
"Out of your league" considerations?
Do you pay a fee for each email?
How quickly does she respond?

[SANDRO43]

Thoughts welcome!

Have a look at the ScamCard in the Scam Avoidance menu at left .

[ECOCKS]

A thought:

If I was a "professional" scammer, I would get on this forum and others like it to read what I need to be doing to polish my act, increasing my chances of a score. Not that we can stop giving advice or pointing out flags but.....

Ah well, eternal vigilance is the price of security.....or something like that.

As for this situation, go to the tried and true basics:

* Ask for a phone number and start calling and see how many hour long phone calls she has time for during a week.

* Start asking when would be a good time for you to come visit in her hometown. Ask for pictures of her showing you the type of life she leads - stores, street she lives on etc.

* Ask her for suggestions on what things can fill up your visit while you are there and where you can stay, how much she will be available for "dates" and such.

These things are too time-consuming and detailed for a scammer to support so she'll either shut off fairly quickly or start sending you pictures of the babushka fiixing napoleans and eclairs for when you get off the plane. It also pre-empts any conversation about money making it more awkward and involved for her to justify coming to you. Again, scammers have no patience for a long game such as this would entail.

[Shadow]

Scammer almost for sure. The letter looks like a form letter where your name appears only in the 'Hello'.

It does not look like (s)he answered any of your questions, instead there is a flood of text that will be 'hit and miss' on whatever you ask.
Her 'questions' are not specific, and any answer by you will not need follow up in the next letter.

If you have time to waste, continue until the money letter. If it costs you money to write, drop at once.

[Whynot]

Thanks for the advice guys!

It's not costing me anything above my base subscription as she's on Elena's models. 

I'll ask her some specific questions and see what happens - will post an update once (if) i get a response.

WN?

[Ravens9273]

Her being on Elena's Model's changes things a bit.

Elena's models works hard to avoid scammers. I had impression you were writting through normal email.

Odds are more in favor now she is real then not.

[Faux Pas]

Thanks for the advice guys!

It's not costing me anything above my base subscription as she's on Elena's models. 

I'll ask her some specific questions and see what happens - will post an update once (if) i get a response.

WN?

Probably a bit early to toss her out. It does have a bit of a smell of a scam letter but it also looks like an early intro letter as well. I'd suggest writing her back with some pointed, specific questions. If she addresses them and you are still interested, ask her some more.

[brucen36]

IF she is excessively beautiful then most likely scammer.  If she is not, then there's a better chance she's for real.

[Kuna]

She's not a scammer until she asks for money...  but I'd bet the money question is coming!

Some other thoughts though...  do people read emails and think to themselves:

"Gosh, that's a really good thought.  That's something I've never thought about.  I like that."

or

"HAHAHAHAHAHA... that's bloody funny."

or

"Hmmmm,  very interesting...  must go Google that."

or

"Wow, her friend Sveta has done well at XYZ."



What I'm trying to say is, "Do the content of an email do anything to attract a man or is a reply enough to inspire them?"

One rule I set for myself as I was whittling down my penpals was a necessity for me to be interested in the person I was writing to / going to meet.

Letters like this don't do that for me... BUT everyone is different.

Kuna

[facetrock]

Letters like that work on the inexperienced man. After you have been doing this awhile they are ungodly boring because they reak of a scammer.
I like the fact that she loves to cook but eats little and if she is depressed she stays in the kitchen. She works out often to keep that ass to die for. The perfect woman in one letter. Who could ask for more? Sorry scam

,

[Daveman]

One of the quickest scam checks you can do is a trace of the sending IP address to make sure it originates from the location she claims...

here's an example of a recent scammer from Elenas Models (yep, they do exist, but EM gets rid of them as soon as they are reported)

first, display the full header:

From chigirva@rambler.ru Thu Apr  2 06:24:50 2009
Return-Path: <chigirva@rambler.ru>
Authentication-Results: mta171.mail.ac4.yahoo.com  from=rambler.ru; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=rambler.ru; dkim=neutral (no  sig)
Received: from 81.19.66.30  (EHLO mxb.rambler.ru) (81.19.66.30)
  by mta171.mail.ac4.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 02 Apr 2009 07:33:18 -0700
Received: from mailc.rambler.ru (mailc.rambler.ru [81.19.66.27])
   by mxb.rambler.ru (Postfix) with ESMTP id 980971B75A0
   for <daveman'saddress@daveman.com>; Thu,  2 Apr 2009 18:33:15 +0400 (MSD)
Received: from A7 (unknown [67.18.118.140])
   (Authenticated sender: chigirva@rambler.ru)
   by mailc.rambler.ru (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9CC6D62469A
   for <daveman'saddress@daveman.com>; Thu,  2 Apr 2009 18:33:03 +0400 (MSD)
Message-ID: <771EDEB2BBFB45F1AC5D4F848A61BB32@A7>
From: <chigirva@rambler.ru>
To: "DavemanTheGreat" <daveman'saddress@daveman.com>
References: <187764.98997.qm@web31803.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <856BCF575D7C4D308D3A61AFF3472315@A7> <842854.28718.qm@web31811.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Hello from David
Date: Thu, 2 Apr 2009 17:24:50 +0400
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
   boundary="----=_NextPart_000_02D5_01C9B3B7.EDC24A10"
Content-Length: 183561

Now, work your way from the bottom up, and the first set of numbers in brackets which you come to will be the originating IP address, in this case 67.18.118.140 (made bold for ease of locating here). Copy this number sans brackets (or write it down, whatever)

Next, go to http://network-tools.com/  (network-toolsDOTcom in case this forum filters out the unapproved link)

Click the selection for TRACE, paste the number into the entry box, then click GO


And here's the information we get:



67.18.118.140 is from United States(US) in region North America


TraceRoute to 67.18.118.140 [8c.76.1243.static.theplanet.com]
Hop   (ms)   (ms)   (ms)      IP Address   Host name
1   66   50   70      72.249.0.65   -
2   69   50   18      206.123.64.22   -
3   51   69   48      216.52.189.9   border4.te4-4.colo4dallas-4.ext1.dal.pnap.net
4   41   69   46      216.52.191.103   core1.tge5-2-bbnet2.ext1.dal.pnap.net
5   29   38   38      144.228.250.125   -
6   14   9   16      208.173.178.133   pr2-so-0-0-0.dallasequinix.savvis.net
7   42   23   26      204.70.200.170   cr1-tengig0-7-5-0.dallas.savvis.net
8   58   55   55      208.172.139.130   -
9   42   28   24      70.87.253.6   te9-1.dsr01.dllstx3.theplanet.com
10   53   26   43      70.87.253.118   76.fd.5746.static.theplanet.com
11   30   23   18      70.87.254.90   te1-1.car09.dllstx2.theplanet.com
12   12   10   7      67.18.118.140   8c.76.1243.static.theplanet.com

Trace complete

so, this woman chigirva@rambler.ru , who claims to be writing from Ukraine is actually sending email from North America.. the trace shows the packet routing which seems to originate specifically in dallas texas.  There are a number of scammers coming from theplanet.com at the time of this posting. 


a google search on the email address, a check of the IP address, a name search, etc, these are the technological quick checks if your gut tells you something is up. 

Agreed, it's not a scammer until the money letter -- but, at the very least you can prove to yourself that she/he/it is a liar, and that's all you need to know to close the door and move on.

[Mir]

IP tracing may not be 100% accurate. I just used it to trace IP of someone who is 101% in Kiev and it said that IP is in Russian Federation.

[Daveman]

Mir, double check that you picked up the first IP address from the bottom. If you accidentally grabbed the second, you'd hit the email server IP which for anything with an RU extension (rambler.ru, yandex,ru, mail,ru, etc.ru) will show a Russian Federation location.   

[SANDRO43]

Next, go to http://network-tools.com/  (network-toolsDOTcom in case this forum filters out the unapproved link)
Click the selection for TRACE, paste the number into the entry box, then click GO

Or, more simply, use the TRACERT command from a DOS Command Prompt .

[Whynot]

Ahem - some of us (the more enlightened ones of course ;-) ) have macs but that's useful for others i'm sure!

[Shadow]

Mir, double check that you picked up the first IP address from the bottom. If you accidentally grabbed the second, you'd hit the email server IP which for anything with an RU extension (rambler.ru, yandex,ru, mail,ru, etc.ru) will show a Russian Federation location.   

Dave,

IP is very useful but not 100% reliable.

Two examples:
- woman writing from Ukraine with an IP address from Germany. She worked for a German company and wrote from her office.
- woman writing from Siberia with an IP address from Moscow. She found a cheaper provider for DSL.

Both were verified to be sincere.

In your example I would partly agree. Not many home connections even in the US have a static IP, which means it is either a company server (and if she works for an American company that could explain the 'orange flag' IP) or a proxy.

[JR]

I'd bait her. I have done this in the past with "ladies" I wasn't sure about even though they didn't show on a scam list but seemed to 'fall' too soon.
This is what I do: I tell them I am coming for a visit. They say "Yeah!" Then I tell them I can't get away and don't know what to do because I want to meet them. Every time I have done this they offer to come. Then they write that they checked into how much everything costs and they can't afford it, especially with the cost of getting a visa thru an agency (this is a huge tip-off since such a service doesn't exist). They go on about how much they love you and want will be with you if only you could send them X-amount of dollars.
I have done this over half a dozen times and it has never failed to bring out the scammer.

[ECOCKS]

Curious about one thing JR.

I know Ukrainians who have come to the US by getting the visa through their travel agencies. Are you saying they cannot do this in specific instances since the women you are tlking about are presumed to be young, single and lack sufficient income/resources for approval?

[JR]

Curious about one thing JR.

I know Ukrainians who have come to the US by getting the visa through their travel agencies. Are you saying they cannot do this in specific instances since the women you are tlking about are presumed to be young, single and lack sufficient income/resources for approval?

No, I am saying this because I am old, fat and ugly and when a 27 yo beauty tells me she can be here in two weeks to satisfy my every need and all that is required is X dollars via WU I get all kinds of warning bells going off.