There used to be a lot of vacancies in dating agencies in Ukraine seeking to hire brides and letter-writers, but not as many as at the present time. It appears that the demand for this type of workers is only increasing.

Ukrainian dating agencies post dozens of ads to hire impostors

A few years ago we did a search and presented a selection of ads from Ukraine’s marriage agencies seeking so called “translators” (people who chat with foreigners and write letters) and “models” (pretty girls whose pictures and videos are used in the ads).

There were 222 vacancies (yes, such an interesting number!) but today we discovered whopping 355 jobs on offer when running a search on the employment portal Work.ua. Some of these publications are listed below (scroll down), the full text and contact details of the agents, wages offered to workers, what the job entails, etc.

“Your wages depend on your activity,” the vacancies state clearly. In other words, the more you write, the more you earn. But for that to happen, the person on the other side should be willing to open the letter and write back, and happy to pay for that.

How do you ensure that? There is a training provided for each applicant. Anyone is accepted! As long as they are willing to do what they are told: What to write, how to entice the poor chaps who got caught in the whirlpool of the pay-per-message online romances taking them into the no-man’s land.

Agents in Ukraine accept anyone willing to drop morals and type the storm out of the keyboard, pretending be the girls in pretty photos: mothers on maternity leave, pensioners, students. The impostors could be males as well as females. If you are being charged for every message, you have no idea whom you are talking to, it’s all done purely to bill you more.

How it works

1. Pretty girls and women are hired to pose for photos. Professional make up artists and hair stylists ensure they look as attractive as possible in the photos, which are then heavily airbrushed and edited. The women are offered 10% from the earnings of the profiles + gifts, which men are encouraged to send by agencies. Providing selfies and videos is also a requirement, so that males who’d bitten the bait believe it’s real and he is talking to the girl from the photos. Girls also pose for photos with gifts (often in a shop, without the gift ever being purchased) and split the money with agents, who forge the purchase receipt in a graphic editor easily, to report “the gift has been delivered”.
2. Writers are employed to type messages and chats. The people typing messages aren’t even required to speak English, they can use online translators, agents state in advertisements.
3. Agents are being paid commissions by dating sites where guys sign up, as a percentage of the fees paid by men. Each website has hundreds of agents managing their “brides” and “writers”.

The key to the scheme is men paying per message. Without that, the fake brides scheme perfected by such sites wouldn’t exist.

Key tip: If you don’t want to be taken for a ride, avoid any dating agencies or websites where you are billed for every message. The charges may seem miniscule to you at first, but they do accumulate quickly into expensive bills for you and contribute to above average wages for the authors from Ukraine.

Are there any genuine sites? Yes, there are several singles portals that do not bill for correspondence and have thousands of profiles of Ukrainian women, for instance, Elenasmodels.com.

Women are made to look gorgeous via a combination of professional makeup and hair and extensive editing of the photos.

The recruitment process

Not all online recruitment portals accept ads from dating agencies in Ukraine. For instance, a popular site Rabota.ua explicitly banned any vacancies from dating sites a few years ago — precisely for the reason that most such offers come from fraudulent PPL structures.

By the way, Ukrainian presidential elections are to be decided this Saturday 20 April — only 3 days left! If a new president is elected (the incumbent Petro Poroshenko competes with the newcomer Volodymir Zelenski, who scored nearly twice as many votes in the first round, so he is now seen as a favourite), then it’s possible he will look into the matter of Ukraine having become a “fake brides capital” of the world.

Zelensky built his campaign on the basis of fighting corruption, which is certainly a part of the pay-per-letter endurance in the country.

Here are some ads for you to read. Enjoy!

• Related: How agents in Ukraine hire brides

2019 update

We retrieved the ads below today. These are the vacancies that are still active and seek applicants right now.

Some guys still cannot believe it is so blatant and obvious and apparent to the naked eye. Yes, it’s this straightforward and direct, and yet these businesses manage to attract clients and earn squillions. From all these little agents (not that little — the listings state over 50 employees) the large Master sites manage to create an enormous cash flow. The machine keeps operating without days or even hours off.

Day and night shifts are available for workers interested in earning money, the agents openly promote.

The original ads are in the local language, but it’s easy to run the URL via the online translator by Google and get an understanding of what is on offer. No feelings are mentioned, only the ability to earn money.

• Related: Affordable dating insurance

Go to Work.ua and enter the word “брачное” (marriage) in the search. You’ll see all the vacancies seeking to hire personnel that is doing the job on pay per letter dating sites presenting women from Ukraine: Letter writers (aka “translators”) and women to pose in photos. The machine keeps going! The ads also list the websites where workers will be applying their skills.

Images: Screenshots from Work.ua