Me and my internet brides

The snow is 18 inches deep at the top of the famous Odessa steps in what was once Soviet Russia, and my feet are turning to lumps of ice. But the dazzling smile on the face of 28-yearold Natalia is enough to melt the coldest heart. Her luminous brown eyes positively sparkle with life.

Russian can be a very sexy language, the French of the Baltic. So, as she speaks through a translator, I cannot help but be transfixed by the instant platitude: "I just want to find a man, a foreigner, who will make me feel safe, who will be reliable and responsible, and, of course, I would like to have a family with him."

That, of course, is what one hopes to hear as a man. Somewhere behind the thump-thump of my beating heart - a temporary condition caused not by incipient passion but intense cold - I wonder if all she is interested in is a marriage certificate, an instant passport to the good life in the West.

I have come to Odessa to find the truth about Russian Brides, women from the former Soviet Union who advertise for husbands on the internet. It is not that I need one myself, you understand, but, well, like any man, I am intrigued by this modern interpretation of the mail-order bride. What quickly emerges from my investigation, though, is that the Russian mafia has a major interest in the business - for the single purpose of fleecing gullible Westerners.

Some websites have false pictures and names. They rip off prospective grooms by tempting them into parting with thousands of pounds upfront for translation services, visas and aeroplane tickets. The women of their dreams, of course, do not exist.

Yet the girls I find on a genuine site, one that I know to be authentic, represent a tapestry of middle-class Russian womanhood - an economist, aged 36, an office manager, 36, a teacher, 49, a designer, 31, and a doctor, 32. None of them are hard on the eye, though some are more attractive than others. They are all dressed respectably, there's not a trace of a decolletage.

It was just after 10pm on a Sunday when I typed the words "Russian Bride" into my computer at home in London and found Natalia. She was on one of the hundreds of sites instantly listed on my screen, offering thousands of potential partners.

A 5ft 6in beauty consultant, born and brought up in Soviet Russia, Natalia claims she cannot find a man to marry in Odessa, now part of the independent state of Ukraine.

"The men here are so irresponsible. They do not respect women. They treat them like slaves. They leave their wives and children. Every second child comes from an incomplete family, with no father. It is the reason that I started to look on the internet.

"I have been looking for a husband for my whole life," she explains gently. "But I have come to the conclusion that the man I will find will be a foreigner."

But she cannot afford to leave Odessa to look for one. A visa to the West can cost the equivalent of two months' salary to a young woman like Natalia - and the United States will not even grant a single Russian woman a visa if she could afford it. They demand an introduction, or an invitation, from a US citizen.

"So I joined an internet site after talking to a friend who had been successful by doing so," she explains.

"I am prepared to wait as long as it takes to find the right man. When I do, I will learn English and move to wherever he lives. Maybe I am oldfashioned but I really just want to have a happy family and a happy life. The main thing for a woman is to make a family, and give birth to a child. That is why I will wait for a foreigner."

Natalia's profile has been on www.russianwife.co.uk for the past month. Yet mine is the only email she has received so far. "But I am optimistic," she says. "Happy people attract happy people. Besides, if I look like a pessimist no one will pay any attention to me." She is looking for a husband aged between 30 and 45 but you sense she would be happy with a man even older, if he was what she calls "reliable".

But is Natalia just too good to be true - the one sincere young woman among thousands of others? Not in my experience.

Another young Russian woman I met while I was in Odessa was Galina, a 37-year-old chemist's shop manager, who has an eight-year-old daughter from a relationship that broke up five years ago, and has been advertising for a husband on the same internet site for the past eight months.

This striking 5ft 5in blonde, with dramatic green eyes, has had "five responses" in that time, she tells me, again through a translator. "I think two of the men are serious," she says. "They have said they are going to come and visit me. All five were from the United States, and the two that are coming are both from Washington."

But Galina has never asked any of her internet suitors for money. "I can earn enough here myself," she explains, "not to have to ask them. Money is not the most important thing. It is the man himself."

ONE of the men coming to see her is a 43-year-old scientist. "He is called Michael and he is coming on 28 March," she says. "The other man is called Buddy, who's 50 and works in air-traffic control. He tells me that he is coming as soon as possible."

Marriage has yet to be mentioned. "I am hopeful," she says calmly, "but I haven't met either of the men yet. I have to speak to them - to sense them - to see whether we could have a future together, to see if the man is sympathetic.

"I'd be happy to go to America. It doesn't matter where I live. The most important thing is to have a family that is stable, and for my daughter to have a future."

The internet site provides a translation service for both women. The men's letters to the site are translated into Russian and the women's replies translated into English. Galina, like Natalia, insists that she would like to go to a country "where women are regarded as ordinary people, not as slaves". She is convinced that the internet "is now the best way for a Russian woman to find a husband" but warns "you have to be very careful with the site you choose".

That is the crucial point. There is darker reality behind the world of Russian Brides than the patently sincere Natalia and Galina. In particular, there are a great many women who are what the trade calls "scammers".

The pictures they put on the site are false, and so are the names. The letters they send promise relationships they will never deliver, and they simply demand larger and larger sums of money. An honest site will charge a small fee for translating letters and organising the correspondence, say £2.50 a time, and it will direct its male customers to the proper visa authorities.

But the less honest sites simply let the women who advertise ask for whatever they want from their potential husbands - and that can amount to a great deal of money.

Bob Captain - who started a website called Russian Blacklist to warn against these unscrupulous women - says he is contacted by about 250 men a year who have been ripped off through the internet. He estimates that "perhaps 50 per cent of all the internet traffic is with scammers who are simply looking to make money out of the men who reply to their ads".

These scams can take all sorts of forms. The potential Russian bride may, for example, ask her admirer for $100 (it is always in US dollars because the currency is so valuable in Russia) to cover the "translation and email costs" of their correspondence. The man agrees but what he doesn't know is that she may be communicating with as many as 20 men at a time, earning herself $2,000 a month - when her actual translation cost is $20 - a dollar a time .

Another trap is the visa scam. After just two or three letters, the Russian Bride announces that she has "fallen in love" with her internet admirer and asks him to send her $300 for a visa - when it actually costs $30. She then asks for $200 for a passport - which actually costs $20. Then there is money for the flight - say $1,200.

But she never buys the ticket, because she has no intention of travelling. She has given her admirer a false name, and - in Bob Captain's words - "she's made $1,700 when the average monthly income is $500."

Or there is the woman who tells her foreign admirer to meet her in her country, and asks to be taken shopping. She wants jewellery, expensive clothes and a monthly income - "until she is able to travel to be with him to marry".

"We've had guys scammed for $50,000 like that," says Captain. The rewards are so considerable that the trade has attracted the attentions of the Russian mafia.

This month, three scammers were caught in the Russian city of Yoshkar-Ola. The translator, computer specialist and psychologist had about 200 victims - mostly from the US - and were earning an average monthly income of $30,000.

The scammers used photographs of local students, whom they paid $50 each to collect the money transfers that men sent them via Western Union.

But the Russian mafia do not take kindly to the identifying of their "scammers". The founder of the site that I used married a British man herself through the internet five years ago. She started to publish the names of women she thought were "scammers" last year - and rapidly discovered how dangerous the mafia could be. Two men visited her mother's house in Odessa late one night and threatened her. The message was simple - "tell your daughter to stop blacklisting or something may happen to you".

"It's a very profitable business in Russia," says Katya, who now lives in Somerset and operates the site with her husband. She does not want me to mention her surname because she still fears for her mother's safety.

"The police say they know about the scammers but are unable to do anything about them."

If you need proof of the success of the Russian Brides industry, just take a look in the ramshackle departure lounge at Odessa's less than gleaming airport.

There is just one advertisement in the whole place, and it is not for vodka or cars. It is for "Fiancée Visas".