PandsLabs: beware of young foreign brides!

18th December 2008

PandaLabs detected a large number of electronic messages allegedly â€œsent by users willing to add the recipient to friendsâ€.
According to PandaLabs information, such messages are aimed to involve a victim into correspondence, coax out personal information and get closer. Usually, a victim is a citizen of some western prosperous country, e.g. USA, Great Britain, Norway, Holland, etc. and a â€œgirlâ€ is from some poor country of Eastern Europe. Well, the scenario is simple as that: she gets closer to him, makes him fall in love with her, in a way, and then plans to come to visit him. Of course, she has no money for an expensive trip and asks for it.
No sooner manages the victim to send money via some impersonal payment system, as all their plans â€œfor the futureâ€ crash down. What should happen in the day of her departure but some kind of drama: some visa problem, and so on and so forth. And she does need money to solve it and come to her darling. And the victim sends more. The sum is never more than $500. Then another problem occurs, and he just goes on sending money. The end sum depends on the victimâ€™s own stupidity, however clinical may it sound.
It is interesting enough, that a few years ago this kind of fraud was very popular and practically any male was beware of that. But now, with the growing number of social networks more and more people publish their pictures and do not found it suspicious when a young â€œpoor girlâ€ gets interested in their personalities.
The most funny thing about the whole situation is that even a fat 55 year-old middle-class man finds nothing strange when a 24 year-old model-looking girl wants â€œto know him betterâ€™. Maybe sometimes it is worth while thinking: what for?..