If you are on a dating web site that charges for every message, it’s bad news. This means you are on a PPL site and you are probably being ripped off. This post explains how the “letter scam” works.

Pseudo dating web sites that charge for every message

Websites that charge for every message are called “pay per letter” (PPL)—these ventures are NOT dating sites. These setups are pseudo dating sites.

What really happens on pseudo dating sites?

Pseudo-dating websites are known for “letter scams”.

• You are paying for correspondence with someone you believe has a genuine interest in you. You are being charged for every message, chat, or photo share. In the meantime, the person who talks to you is being paid and has NO romantic interest in you.

In other words, you, the Client, are being scammed through paying for letters that have no more meaning than your chatting to a “phone sex line” operator at $3.95 a minute.

• You are NOT building a relationship.
• You are NOT talking to the person from photos in your daily chats.
• The person from photos may not even be single: She could be involved, engaged, married with two kids. She is likely getting a cut from your payments as well, for allowing to use her identity.

How pseudo dating sites operate?

• Pseudo Dating Website pays commissions to Agents, who register profiles of “women” (“brides”). Commission is paid for all generated content: letters, chats, photos.
• Agents get commission from the Pseudo Dating Website, and pay a share of this money to: (1) “Brides” (women whose photos you see in the profiles) and (2) Writers (people who type messages). Usually there are photos of one woman and another person types messages under the alias, pretending to be the girl from photos.

The layered structure allows the Master website to pretend they are the good guys. “Yes, we charge for letters, but they are supposed to be genuine,” it’s their defence. They close their eyes on the fact the “bride” professes her love to dozens of suitors at once and spends 8-hour shifts daily chatting to men. “So what? It’s not us; it’s her.” But surely, they know it’s fake. They are the ones controlling the code for the site and making it possible. Their main concern is to make it look “legitimate”, so they can keep this operation going.

4 layers of players

Thus, there are 4 layers of players on pseudo dating websites:

1. The Master Site: the online dating portal where you pay money.
2. Agents: people who hire “brides” and “writers”.
3. “Brides”: pretty women who sold their photos and videos to the Agent, in order to receive a share of the profit from the fees that Clients pay. Usually “brides” are required to provide fresh photos monthly to continue earning an income.
4. Writers: people who can speak English, tell exciting stories and type affectionate messages to Clients, with the view to keep them on the site for as long as possible.

Many pretty girls’ profiles are listed as “Brides” on “pay per letter” websites for years. Writers change, but the same profile is still there, making money for the owners and Agents of the PPL scheme.
Agents prefer to separate the functions of typing love confessions and providing pretty pictures. The Agent’s goal is to generate as much billable content as possible, so they get their commissions.

Do writers always type letters instead of the “brides”? Or can it be that it’s still the woman from the photos who is writing to me?

Some “brides” type their own letters, but this is rare. It’s unlikely that you are actually talking to the woman from photos.

• If a bride is pretty and speaks English, she can easily operate her own scam (as an individual scammer) by inviting him to Ukraine and getting a sizable commission on renting apartments, taking a man shopping, and so on. She will make more money this way. She doesn’t need to make money for the Agent and the Master site, who take the largest share of the profits, while writers slave at nights for peanuts. In fact, the girl can just “work for herself”.
• If a woman is genuinely interested in finding a partner abroad, she goes to one of real international dating sites, where she can quickly swap contact details and chat directly on Skype with no agency looking over her shoulder and telling her what she can and cannot do. She doesn’t need to waste her time by writing to men she is not interested in, which the Agent obliges employees to do, and abide by other dozens of rules for Writers.
• Another reason why Agents prefer to separate the function of writing letters is that writers under an alias have no emotional attachment to the communication: They don’t get offended, as they are not talking under their own identity. Writers also understand that they are doing something morally wrong, so they need to justify their poor ethical judgement.

Writers soothe their conscious by viewing all male Clients as “losers & abusers”, who are trying “to buy women”. This attitude allows writers to continue doing the job, rather than becoming emotionally attached, getting involved with the man, possibly getting married, and thus cutting off the opportunity for the Agent to earn money from this online dating profile forever.

The “Letter Scam” setup

This is how the “letter scam” starts and operates, from the beginning.

• Pretty young women, who have better things to do than typing letters all night long to lonely men in America, do nothing but give their photos to the Agent in exchange for 10% commission + gifts that men send (Agents and the Master Site take their cut first from the gifts as well).
• Who is typing letters and chats? Bots and Writers. Initially you are usually contacted by a bot, which sends chat invitations and letters to all men who are online. Once you respond to a chat or letter and start paying (initial chats and emails are free, to lure you in), then a real human tunes in.

Normally Writers are people who are NOT single or pretty:

• Married mothers on maternity leave trying to get some extra cash while looking after kids at home.
• Old pensioners struggling to make ends meet.
• Pimple-faced male students of the department of foreign languages, etc.

So, if you were thinking that paying for all these letters is bringing you closer to making your dreams of finding a partner closer, bad news.

The money you were paying went to scammers to buy BMW’s and fund their overseas vacations, while you are wasting your time and emotional investment, thinking you are building a relationship with a woman who is interested in you.

The deliberate scam

The Master Site top managers are aware of the setups that Agents run, but prefer to close their eyes on scams, so that they can continue generating large profits for as long as the opportunity to defraud love-hungry western males lasts. (Insiders estimate the size of PPL industry at over 200 million USD yearly.)

And it is a deliberate scam.

Master Sites do nothing to change the system and make it impossible for Agents to run scams by hiring Writers and “Brides“.

Not only that, PPL scams are already spreading beyond Eastern Europe or Asia.

• There is evidence that pretty women from Europe are lured by online “model agencies” to allow PPL schemes to use their photos and videos on pay per letter dating sites, in exchange for a complimentary photo session (the same thing they do now in Ukraine).
• To operate these European profiles, Agents hire Writers in countries where salaries are low, such as Ukraine.
• It would be extremely simple to stop such scams for PPL sites: Just stop paying commissions to agents. This means women would need to register directly and communicate on their own, and only with the men they want to be talking to. But this would mean, no more giant profits from men paying for love chats that were totally fake. Master PPL Sites appear to prefer profits over ethics.

Why is this scam allowed to continue?

We are just as bewildered as you are.

Check this post on tips how to complain if you fell a victim of a “letter scam” on a pseudo-dating site.

And be smarter next time!

Read also:

• Time to nail the PPL
• Why are you so strongly against PPL sites?
• The Evolution of Dating Scams: From Jeff Peters to PPL Sites
• Slavic Women Seeking Men on Dating Sites Vs. Immigrants: Exploring Career Opportunities