You probably already figured this out, but my blogging efforts have migrated to a new home.
You probably already figured this out, but my blogging efforts have migrated to a new home.
The next time you’re thinking of taking a trip, I invite you to fly into Eli Manning Airport.
You may be thinking, “Wait, there’s no airport named after Eli.” You would be right. But tell that to my fake Russian ex-girlfriend.
Last year I got intentionally catfished by someone on a dating site who claimed to be a girl in Russia. “Olga” never asked me for money, frequently got angry if I didn’t respond quickly, and the whole thing fizzled out after a month.
Well, I did it again. This time for a little over three months, during which the new girl, Anastasiya, sent me a solid 60 emails. She started slow, telling me that she did not want to rush into anything and that she “very much want to meet the true love.”
Anastasiya told me that men in Russia are not interesting in settling down and taking care of a girlfriend.
“They like more to have a good time, live fast,” she said.
On day nine, she told me a story about her boyfriend of 18 months cheating on her with her roommate. Right in front of her. Then she apologized for telling such an unpleasant thing, but explained that she didn’t want to hide anything from me.
Almost all of her emails came with a picture that had the general attitude of, “Oh hey there, I’m just being all casual over here.”
On day 9 she asked for my picture, which I never sent. Fast-forward to day 24 when she recounted how she was discussing me with her friend:
“I him have told about our letters as we to understand each other and that at us with you much in common,” she said. “I to show them your photo, I to unpack it and now at my place there is you pic.”
I didn’t challenge her on the fact I hadn’t actually sent a photo. Maybe she drew a picture of how she imagined me? After all, I was clearly on her mind all the time. The next day, she told me of a dream in which we were at the beach and ran into each others arms. There was a kiss. “It was divine,” she said.
Our relationship was on the super fast track. Just like with Olga, it took only about a month for Anastasiya to fall in love with me:
“I very much want that we were together,” she said. “Now I am possible to give in dreams, but these are fine dreams and I trust that dreams come true also I will try to make all for this purpose. I love you…… I hope that my letter will give to you many fine emotions this day.”
The finest. She told me again the next day that she looked at my (imaginary) pictures above her bed every night before going to sleep. A week later, she first broached the idea of us seriously meeting, saying she would go to a local travel agency and see what we needed to do. She also sent me “millions of air kisses,” which I can tell you may sound nice, but are really exhausting to have to catch.
Day 38: disaster. Anastasiya went to the travel agency and learned she would need $710 for documents in order to travel to the United States. She only had $120. Naturally, I offered to support her in any way I could, and her tears quickly turned to elation. All she needed from me was the name of my local airport in order to find out how much the flight would cost.
At this moment, I actually had 1 percent doubt in the back of my mind that made me picture some poor woman sitting at JFK waiting to be picked up by Fred (the name I used). So I figured if I made up a fake airport, and she went on like it was normal, I would know for certain that she was simply trying to get a money transfer and not actually travel here.
Thus, Eli Manning Airport, which was funny enough when I wrote it, but seeing her reference it brought on some serious LOLs.
“I told them the name of your airport,” she wrote. “They said that the cheapest ticket from Moscow to your airport will cost 728 dollars. I told them that this is your airport , Eli Manning airport. Fred So my whole trip will cost to you . 1318 dollars.”
The travel agency apparently told her to go visit the bank, which in turn advised her that I should use Western Union to send her the money. “Fred have you heard about this company?”
On day 53, Anastasiya went Olga on me. I hadn’t responded for three days, and apparently that’s not okay when you’re madly in love.
My bad. Lucky for her, I had good news! I told her I went to Western Union and sent her almost double the amount of money she needed. I included a 10-digit confirmation number (obtained from an online random number generator), which shockingly didn’t seem to correspond to a Western Union transaction.
“Fred , They told me that this translation does not exist. I have long argued with them, but they said that nothing can not do.”
I replied that I didn’t understand the problem, and sent her a receipt, which was literally this picture, at this size:
When she said it was impossible to read, I told her it worked fine for me and suggested there was a problem with the computer she was using. After a few days of back-and-forth, we reached the end of the second month with me announcing that I had talked to Western Union, and they were willing to give me a new receipt.
But then we hit a snag. I told her that when I went back to get the new paperwork, I was given a notice that my transfer had been DENIED and was being investigated by the authorities. “PLEASE TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON,” I wrote. Anastasiya has ice water in her veins. She was not phased by such silly inconveniences.
“Fred I know why it happened, I know why they refused to help you. Maybe their boss confines send from your country to Russia so much money , because our countries are not the best relationship. Fred , I just went to the office of Western Union, and they said that such a situation as we have often happens.”
Totes not a big deal, Fred. She said her Western Union people advised that I should split the transaction up into two smaller ones to have a better chance of it slipping through. I expressed unease, telling her that every day the authorities were giving me more information that made me doubt her: “You need to convince me you are genuine before I can continue loving you.”
Her response? WHAT.EVS. “Now I do not even know if I want to come to you,” she wrote. “Now’s not the money . Now the whole thing in our relationship with you.” However, a few days later (day 65), she assured me again that everything will be cool if we just persevere. She said many girls from her town had come to the U.S., including one who works for the police now and assured Anastasiya that she and I will not have any problems.
For the heck of it, I asked her to take a picture holding my name and to see a copy of a contract she had gotten from the travel agency, you know, so I could make sure she wasn’t getting ripped off or anything. She sent both.
The contract was, not surprisingly, all in Russian. I do not speak Russian. I do have a couple of friends who do, and they were pretty excited to translate for me. Of course, the one thing I did not need translated was the name of her destination:
My friend Anastasia (note the different spelling) told me the travel agency is called Flamingo Tourism and “doesn’t, uh, seem to exist.” Another friend, Margarita, read it and said, “If honest, it says nothing concrete…nothing at all. No dates when the contract was signed.” She also said the amounts referenced were $710 for documents and now only $590 for airfare.
I told Anastasiya I went back to Western Union, had no problems with the transaction this time, and got a new receipt:
As you can see, I spent about three minutes in Photoshop altering a receipt from an Italian guy I found online. She told me she went to Western Union, and again, shockingly, was unable to get the money. She even had the audacity to question why parts of the receipt are dated 2011 instead of 2014.
This is where our relationship came crumbling down. On day 82 I told her that I didn’t understand why all of this was such a hassle. “I’m not saying you’re lying about the problems,” I said, “but you are the one who said to use this service and it has been nothing but problems.”
Day 83, Anastasiya: “Don’t know why you think I could decieve you.”
Day 84, Fred: “Lies on lies on lies.”
Day 85, Anastasiya: “Fred you BASTARD. I quit my favorite job because of you…maybe you cheated on me.”
A few days went by, but the situation did not improve.
Day 87, Anastasiya: “Fred, you do not know anything about my love. Once again, I was convinced that all men only want money alcohol and entertainment.”
Day 87, Fred: “Um, I never asked you for any of those things. It was you who asked me for money.”
At this point I was pretty done with our “relationship,” so I didn’t respond. A week later, she wrote to me again.
“Hello my Fred. I have not received emails from you. How are you? I always look forward to your letter. I miss you and still think about how we’ll be together.”
I briefly considered going in for another round, but a nap seemed like a better idea. My only response to her was, “I’m fine, how are you?” Three days later she sent her final message.
“Hello Fred, I have all the old. I returned to my job. There is nothing new in my life happens. I’m still all alone and did not find a man for herself. Fred, Maybe you found a girl for yourself? Will tell me about it.”
I told her I had in fact found a girl, and after 99 days a love for the fairytale books came to an end.
When something starts to lose its appeal, it’s only natural as human beings to seek out a way to make it more interesting. When I got to the point of being very over an online dating site, I used the waning weeks of my subscription to get intentionally catfished.
For those unfamiliar with the term, I engaged with accounts that were clearly people lying about who they were in order to get something. Tipoffs included using Demi Lovato in their profile pictures, accounts that would pop up for just a few hours day after day using the same picture, or profiles that asked the guy to email them at a Yahoo address instead of through the dating site itself.
It took a while to get one of them to bite. I tried using the same strategy I’ve used before when replying to those Nigerian scams, which is to attempt to sound not so smart [I swear I blogged about this but for the life of me can’t find it]. In this case, I added in an extra level of basically saying, “OMG IF SOMEONE AS PRETTY AS YOU TALKED TO ME THAT WOULD MAKE MY LIFE!!” (Slightly different words of course, and without the caps.)
Finally, on May 27, I received a reply from Olga. I want to put “Olga” in quotes, but I also don’t want to do that for the whole post, so let’s just assume the Olga part is the one thing that was true.
I’ve seen the movie “Catfish,” and most of the episodes of the resulting show on MTV. I know how these conversations go, and how to use certain tools to clearly see someone is lying. I also have some common sense. For instance, Olga mentioned many times in the 27 emails she sent me over the course of a month that she went to the library to talk to me. She supposedly lives in Kansk, Russia, a town of about 100,000 people that must have the most amazing library system hours on the planet since she sent the majority of her messages between 11 p.m. and 4:30 a.m. local time.
In those emails she goes on and on in awful English about herself, and sometimes would ask questions about me. I rarely answered her questions, and even then only briefly (and obviously made up), but she never seemed to care.
What did she care about? When I didn’t respond the next day. Each time I did that — sometimes intentionally — she got progressively angrier. The first time was on May 29:
A few days later, things were okay again. She told me on May 31 how she left home to go to “institute” where she lived in a hostel, five girls to a room. At night they would stay up talking about their dreams for the future. It was there she learned how to make many meals. She assured me she is a great cook.
I did not respond to that email the first day. That made Olga less than pleased with me:
After leaving the institute she got a job teaching art to kids. At least I think that’s what she tried to say. She admitted on June 2 that although she learned English in school, “it is not so good and sometimes I not understand all that you write.” She went on to ask that I not take offense if because of that she does not answer my questions. Olga has some great diversionary tactics, including laying the groundwork for questions I haven’t even asked her yet. We’ll get there in a minute, hang tight.
She mentioned a few times how her parents live very close by, in the next town over, but then later gave the names of both where she and they live. They turn out to be almost two hours apart (according to Google Maps). Oh and for the record, her dad is named Sergei and her mom is Svetlana.
On June 6, she sent me an excited email saying she had been to the hairdresser where she got her hair cut very short. She had sent me many pictures before, ones that all seemed like someone trying too hard to look “natural.” In all of them she had longer hair, like this:
Along with her haircut tale, she sent me this:
I would believe either this actually was a short cut, or just that the angle obscures the rest of her longer hair behind her. Two days later she told me how she hung out with her girlfriends and how they all loved her new hair so much! She sent me a picture from the wonderful day they had in the sun:
My, what fast-growing hair you have, Olga! I didn’t ask her about it. After all, this message also included such nice things about me:
“Fred [from my alter-ego email address I use for any service that I think will send me annoying emails], with each letter you become to me more and more interesting. Already it seems to me, that at us it is a lot of general. I impatience wait for your letter because they to me I cheer up.”
It is at this point she seems to be trying to move past the nothing I have revealed to her, so that she can get to the point of whatever she’s going to get out of me. I was more than happy to try to find out what she was going to ask me, which I assumed was going to be for money.
The next day she set up a scenario that I thought was going in that direction. She told me that out of nowhere, her boss at her art teaching job called her into his office. She said he touched her inappropriately, she slapped him in the face, and ran off, never to return to that job. I played very sympathetic, trying to get her to feel like I would do anything for her — like send her a bunch of money to help her out now that she was unemployed. We were getting somewhere.
Sort of. June 11, she abandoned the money route and really drove home how amazing I am. “Mum asked me on you, I told all,” she said. The next day she “washed and went to walk on street. There very beautiful nature. I went and thought of how it would be fine to go now with you for a hand!”
How fine indeed, Olga. I told her how I would love that as well, if only she could tell me how we could spend time together like that. This is where she should ask me to wire her cash for a plane ticket. She did not. Instead she sent me another boring email, to which I didn’t respond. By this point you should know how she took that:
That’s right, anger! How did I react to this? Let’s see if she can get angrier! I went three more days without responding, then sent her fewer words than are in this paragraph. She responded with some serious escalation of our then three-week correspondence:
“I ask be not silent, speak with me, in fact I cannot live without you! I beg and I ask only about one do not leave me and my love, I ask love me in fact I love you all heart. I cannot eat and sleep I cannot do it while this pain inside of me! I am afraid that this string will break also I for what not leaving and I shall not leave you my love! I love you and only you my love forever!”
I mean, I know I’m awesome and all, but women in the United States certainly aren’t that smitten so quickly. Maybe I need to move to Russia. I decided to really press the issue at this point, because it felt like we were just going to go through the same patterns over and over. On the show “Catfish,” one of the big things that the fake people refuse to do is video chat with their supposed loves. I casually asked Olga if she had Skype. She didn’t appreciate that:
The next day, June 21, I asked her again. She flipped out:
“I to you have told that I can not speak with you on skype or make to you video! You Understand?”
Oh, I understand. But wait, she then immediately changes tone, talking two sentences later about how she had a dream we went to the movies together:
“When the comedy has ended, we left cinema happy and happy. You have told, that spend me. When we reached the house we did not wish to be separated. We stood about my door both talked. Also have not noticed, how became close one to another and we have kissed. OUR FIRST KISS WAS FINE!!!!!! IT WAS FINE!!!!!!”
Wow, 12 exclamation points? I am a hell of an imaginary kisser. Especially so soon after getting the “You Understand?” treatment. At this point, I was feeling pretty hopeful that I was close to finding out what she wanted. I was hoping it would be something outrageous, but I was willing to accept some boring request for money.
I was busy for a few days, and forgot to respond to her message. So on June 24, she sent me this:
Olga was sad, but not really in a way she hadn’t been when I didn’t respond before. I didn’t immediately respond that day either, leaving her to send me a message on the 25th:
That’s not an error on my part. That is, word for word, the exact same message sent two days in a row. It is also where our correspondence comes to a close. When I did respond, she didn’t reply. I sent her I think two more messages trying to get her back talking to me, but to no avail. Olga has moved on to the next mark.
So that brings us to the last piece of this story. I used Google’s reverse image search function to see if any of her pictures showed up in other places on the Internet. They do. Plenty of them. There’s a European Facebook-like site called VK.com. I found at least five accounts that use her pictures, all with different names, and most with few friends.
But there’s one with 3,600 followers, and it also has photos that don’t appear on the other accounts and never showed up in Fred’s inbox. There are comments from this person on her page and others. It seems like the most likely actual owner. Meet Marta Goy:
I sent Marta a message today trying to touch base and see if I could verify she’s the one in the pictures. No response yet. I’ll let you know if I end up talking to her.
A little more research also turned up other people who had contact with Olga. This post, on a message board for people who unfortunately weren’t intentionally talking to people like Olga, describes a similar arc, including the flighty behavior when asked for actual proof that she was actually who she said. This guy apparently got her to respond again for a while and seems like they had arranged for her to visit, but it never happened.
The moral of the stories of course is that red flags are red flags, and it’s always more fun to be on the side of screwing with them and not the other way around.
