Stories. Background checks. Scam in Kokshaysk

This is William from Maxim Introductions in Yoshkar-Ola. We made the attempt to deliver the flowers that you ordered. You should have two other emails with three photos attached. (I did not want to send too many in one mail.)

We went to the village to deliver the flowers on Sunday. The village was quite far, maybe 50 kilometers, so for the price it was actually a non-profit operation for us. But we don't go there "everyday" so it was ok.

We could not get the flowers to Irina because she does not live in the village like she said. Instead of a delivery, we actually ended up doing a background check. If she existed we would find the house with little problem and present the flowers. As it was we talked to a number of people and discovered that this lady or anyone with that family (last) name does not live (or has never) lived there. We got this information from reliable sources also as it turned out.

The village of Kokshaiskt is very near the Volga river, a rather nice and neat village for this area of Russia. The main street is about 3/4 of a kilometer long. The village is not that wide. So it is a rather small place. In these villages, The people will know everyone.

When we first came in, we talked to a few people who were at the little "Bazaar" which was a row of tables or stands about 10 meters long. They did not know the street or the person. We then talked to a small family in a small car. They had lived in the village their whole life and did not know this person at all, or her name.

We figured at this time that the lady was what is referred to as a scammer. We decided to go to the other end of town to the church. We could see the steeple at the other end of the street. We met a very interesting lady on the way to the church. she was walking along the street, probably coming home from the church. This woman was the village administrator! She said she knew everyone in the village. Irina definitely did not live there. It does not take long to find out something in a Russian village!

The church was open. There were two older ladies at the entrance. When we took the photo of me with the flowers at the church door and they moved behind one of the gate pillars. (You can see an arm in the photo.) They also had not heard of Irina. So what to do with the flowers?

Across the narrow street from the church door was a man and two children. They were probably in the church since the girls had their heads covered. The one older girl had a small bunch of grasses and wild flowers (you can just barely see it on the bottom corner of the photo on the bench) so we decided rather than leave the flowers in the church, we would give it to the children which is what we did.

So you can see the final recipient of the Roses!

The driver got the address of the children's father and we will send him the photo also.

As you can see this turned out to be more of a background investigation. There are very many casual and very professional people out there who are experts at manipulating the dating scene internationally so one must be very careful. Fortunately in this case you made a small investment which saved you from a lot of wasted time time, emotion and money. The woman (or possibly the man) who you were talking to probably picked this village believing it would be out of the way enough that no one would deliver a gift to or check on.

Be very wary of free sites, also if someone contacts you. There are also agencies involved in fraud. I know, because I personally interviewed two ladies that worked for one of these operations. The one girl quit because she refused to write "fake" letters, the other girl just turned beet red and embarrassed and refused to comment when confronted with the issue.