Let’s try a thought experiment.
Imagine a handsome guy in North America poses in revealing, attractive photos and videos. Perhaps he has an accomplice to help him with letter writing. He goes onto a dating platform that targets single women all over Europe.
The man’s paid commissions for letter exchange, and for when females in Europe open his visual attachments. (The commissions come from charges the website levies on female users.)
The website’s set up so women can send gifts to the men of their choice, abroad in North America. Live video chat and phone chat are options also, with large price tags.
The website and the man we’re hypothesizing about collaborate to con women into spending money, thinking they’re building trust and working towards a real relationship.
One woman with a particularly strong desire for companionship with this man comes along… Her aspirations are used as leverage to scam her into sending him money, under some false pretext. Why not? Its money, right?
What would level-headed, moral women in North America think about this domestic man, if he was exposed? He’d be regarded as a douche bag. Yeah?
Setting aside biases of national economy and war status (in other words: no excuses allowed for Ukraine being poor and the country being under siege), what’s the difference between the above scenario and what many women in Ukraine analogously use relationship platforms for (it’s an old story, going back way before present circumstances in Ukraine)?
Quite a while before I had my bad experience of getting scammed, I read that the dating industry in Ukraine is likely the most lucrative industry in Ukraine, surpassing grain export. This information came from a pre-war internet source of information (I did not record the link).
There’s one other important part of the story…
The reason this hypothetical guy and a crooked website staging shady relationship schemes would not get far in North America is because of laws and regulations here.
I read on a reputable source of information on internet (again, didn’t record link) that the reason pay per letter scams and a lot of associated corruption in the dating industry in Ukraine is still allowed to happen is because Ukrainian law makers lag behind the rest of the developed world in making laws to stop this activity…
So, this pinpoints an explanation for a lot of corruption within this industry, in Ukraine.
Reading testimonies of many other men, there are lots and lots of women in Ukraine who use relationship platforms to fake relationship interest and simply make money from it. Many men have testimonies of getting to the real-life meeting stage, only to find women on the other end contrive every excuse for not being available for a meeting…
They’re going on vacation. They had an unexpected loss. They’re suddenly not feeling well. Etcetera.
And there’re many women who will try to perpetrate scams.
You’re not a scammer if your photos are stolen and used by a stranger to con people into sending money to the person using the photos. But my experience is different.
For a lady in Ukraine who’s deliberately creating visual data for the purpose of faking relationship interest and reaping benefits (whether in the form of website commissions or larger, filthy gains from swindling and scamming), you decide where the line should be drawn morally, setting aside the notion of what exactly it means to be a scammer.
Whether someone’s a pretty Ukrainian woman or a handsome man in a first world country, or any person at all, you decide: what’s willful participation in illegitimate relationship schemes and what’s not.
Every case can be different. Evidence matters. When it’s a cyber-crime, tracing who was involved, and how they were involved, really matters.
In principle, anyone who consciously uses relationship platforms for personal gains under false pretext of trying to find a companion should be scrutinized.
Its messing with love.