It sounds easy. I pick a girl from a website, I write to her for several months to get to know a little about her and then I board a plane to her country where we meet, fall in love and live happily ever after ... right? Tell, not exactly. The scenario that I have just painted does happen from time to time, but it has been my experience in my many trips to Ukraine and from my many conversations with men who have attempted this method, that this seldom ever happens. In fact, I know and have met literally hundreds of men who have attempted to find a bride this way, and of all of them I am only familiar with a handful in which this scenario has actually played out the way that it should. There are too many human factors that interfere with this seemingly simple method for it to be dependable or effective, many that you may never have thought of. The following is a list of points that you should give some thought before you waste hundreds or even thousands of dollars on writing to women that you have never met and have no way of verifying that she is actually the one replying to your letters or what her true intentions are:

In most cases you have no way of knowing if the woman you are writing to is actually the one responding to your letters.

It has been my experience that at least a quarter of the letters that I and other men that I know have received from women on sites that specialize in "Correspondence" were not actually written by the woman who the letter is supposed to have come from. In fact, in most of these cases the woman knew nothing about my letters or me until I actually met them in their hometown and showed them our alleged correspondence. I have seen this happen time and time again. How does this happen?

Most of the time the woman is an unwilling pawn for an unscrupulous local agency that is trying to keep the "money train" rolling. Since many agencies are paid every time you read or respond to a letter and have it translated it is in their best interest to keep this cycle rolling. Some local agencies have justified this by saying that they do this because most of their clients are difficult to get hold of or do not have time to frequent the agency. Their work or study schedule does not permit it, they live too far out of town or perhaps they do not even have a phone so that they can be notified of your letter. They say that if no one responds to your letter the woman will have little chance of meeting with you so they write to you in her place until they can get hold of her ... allegedly. In some cases this might be a legitimate excuse, but for the most part I think this is just rationalization of a deceptive practice. Most of the girls that I have met that were not aware of my letters told me that the agency could have easily notified them if they so chose. Some of them did not even know that their profile was on the Internet! They only went to the agency to have photos done and the next thing you know there's a man in her hometown that has traveled thousands of miles to see her expecting a meeting!

The truth is that there are some unscrupulous agencies out there that do not want to leave their potential revenue in the hands of the two people doing the corresponding. They know that their chances of ever getting caught is almost none since roughly only 5% of all men writing to women in the former Soviet Union will ever make the trip over and of that 5% only some of them will actually come to their town in particular and even fewer will ever figure out where to go to complain. That being said, I think that most of the local agencies out there are trying to run a legitimate business and are honestly trying to help the women in their town find a foreign husband, but make no mistake, there are those that are just in this for the money and there is a big enough contingent of those types out there that you should be wary.

Most of the agencies that I have talked to about this subject have responded like this: It is a common and accepted industry practice for most of the local agencies to send out blanket letters of introduction to men whom they think their women might be interested in. However, once a man replies it is the responsibility of the local agency to notify the girl, translate the letter and then translate and send her reply. Most of the local agencies that are involved heavily in correspondence seem to agree that there is nothing wrong with giving the correspondence a little "jump-start."

In my opinion you should never receive a letter from a lady without her knowledge or written by an agency interpreter posing as your girl for any reason, even a letter of introduction. I have seen too many instances in which men have received so-called "Introduction Letters" from ladies who were not actually interested in them to believe that this is a practice which benefits anyone except those making money from it. When a man receives a letter from a woman he generally has to pay to read it and then pay to respond. If the girl is not aware that this letter was sent to this particular man and it turns out that she is not actually interested in him, he has just wasted this money, not to mention the disappointment of not receiving a reply to his letter when he thought that the lady had initiated the correspondence.

Why do the major correspondence sites allow this to go on? The problem is that it is nearly impossible for an American owned website that allows agencies to apply on-line to regulate the practices of local marriage agencies that they do not own in Russia and Ukraine.

Most of the large correspondence sites buy the vast majority of their ladies' profiles and pictures from these local agencies and in the majority of cases and have no real way to police or penalize these local agencies for these practices or more importantly, no real relationship or loyalty built with these agencies that would cause the agency to do the right thing. I will be glad to give you many specific examples that have happened to me personally in which I have found out first hand that I was deceived by correspondence. The most glaring instance that I can think of I will share with you now. It involves not only a local agency, but also an individual girl and almost every man in my tour party.

On my first trip to Ukraine I enlisted the services of one of the major tour/ correspondence companies. I met a very attractive young named Natasha, with whom I had corresponded before my trip. Natasha seemed to be very well known among the other men in my tour group of which there were about 40.They all seemed to know her name and everything about her. I had almost every member of my tour group approach me during the two days that I spent with her to tell me that they had engaged in lengthy correspondence with her at one time or another. Many of them had come there specifically to meet her. When I questioned her about this she did not deny it. In fact, she went into great detail in telling me how the system works and how she and her local agency made a living by corresponding with as many guys as possible. Apparently, since she was one of the most popular girls, she received literally hundreds of letters per week. She told me that she was paid a per-letter fee to reply to as many as she could and that other members of the local staff replied to the rest. She told me that on a good week she could make $50, which in Ukraine is a decent living. I reported this to the staff of the tour company when I returned home, but Natasha's profile remained on their site for more than a year.

As I said before I believe that most of the agencies out there are honest and that most of the girls are genuine, however you must be aware of what has happened to many men before you and what can potentially happen to you if you engage in correspondence with someone half-way around the world whom you have never met before. Think of it this way; If there is any chance at all that I will be lied to, taken advantage of or ripped off corresponding with these women, why do it if there is a safer and more effective method available to me?

Pre- Trip Correspondence can create false feelings and impressions about someone that you have never met; feelings that can only truly be developed through a personal meeting and spending time with someone.

It has been my experience that most men who visit the Ukraine do not end up with a woman they have written to before their trip. I think that this occurs for several reasons: When writing to someone for an extending period of time you develop an idea of who you think that this person is in real life and seldom is that idea realized upon a personal meeting. Second, it is very easy to develop the fantasy syndrome of love and romance through the written word. Again, most are disappointed when they meet in real life and their meeting is not the perfect vision that they had developed in their head. Last, and most superficial, is that many times the person does not look in person exactly like they do in their pictures. Many times months of heartfelt correspondence are dashed in the blink of an eye as soon as you meet and realize you are not physically attracted to the other person.

Writing to a woman before your trip may actually hurt your chances of meeting her.

Believe it or not, you can actually disqualify yourself from a meeting with a woman whom you might think is perfect for you by allowing her to make naive and incorrect assumptions about you based on what you have said in your letters. In addition, you are allowing her to make a decision on whether or not she would like to meet you based on your picture, profile and letters instead of meeting her and having her decide if she is interested in you based on that personal meeting. I know this is difficult to grasp, but in most instances if you haven't written to a woman and just show up in her home town she will meet you with almost no notice, sight unseen, with no problem. I have seen many times where a man has shown up expecting to meet a woman that he has written to and she has not shown up for their meeting or has made the decision not to meet with him based on the content of his letters, his pictures or his profile, whereas other men in the group who had not written to this lady previously were able to meet with this same woman without issue. Go figure

Correspondence spawns feelings of possession. (This may come into play if you are planning to meet with more than one woman).

Allow me to explain. Most of these women come into this situation with the understanding that men will come to their agency to meet with multiple women. A man who comes to town and goes to the local agency can meet with many women without issue. However, if a man writes to these women first a funny thing happens. More of these women than not will become possessive of him and if they do not ask the question directly, they will assume that he is coming only to meet her. The revelation later that he is there to meet with others as well does not normally go over very well. Secondly, if the question is asked directly, this is a no win question for you if it is your intention to meet with more than one woman. If you say yes, then you will more than likely lose her and if you say no then you have just started off a relationship with a lie! Neither is good.

Finally, Corresponding with someone in a foreign country whom you have never met can be dangerous! (Never travel to meet someone new by yourself even if you have been to Ukraine before) She may not show up to meet you at the airport or even worse!

On every trip to Ukraine so far, I have met at least one guy who has told me the same old story about writing to a girl and eventually going to meet her, only to be stood up at the airport. I have also fielded literally hundreds of phone calls from men who have had this same thing happen to them. If you are going to go to Russia or Ukraine to meet one woman in particular, a method which I don't endorse by the way, at least have a backup plan, just in case. Remember, trust is earned. Do not put your trust completely in someone you have never met just because you have exchanged a few romantic letters with one another.

At least make guide and lodging arrangements with a local agency, just in case your lady does not show up. Be smart, be safe and do the research to find a local agency that can help you achieve your ultimate goal.

Being stranded in a strange country cannot only be frustrating, but dangerous as well. The two most glaring examples of this I can think of are two men I met who are both lucky to still be with us! The first was a man from Texas whom I met in Kherson. He had obviously been beaten up from looks of his face. He was a Ukrainian travel veteran who met a girl on-line at one of the major "correspondence" sites and traveled alone to Ukraine to meet only her and he did not use any agency. They spent several days together, mostly shopping he said and everything seemed fine. Then one night she requested that they go to one of the local nightspots to dance. During the evening she professed to have a headache and asked if he would escort her home. Of course he agreed. Unwittingly the man was being set up by the girl whose boyfriend was part of the local mob. He was taken to a spot not far from the club where other men were waiting to drag him out of the car at gunpoint and beat him up. They also robbed him of everything valuable that he had on him and then headed to the ATM to make a forced withdrawal. He was then taken back to his hotel where the men dropped him off. (How considerate of them!) This is just evidence that these men were not worried in the least about getting caught.

The second man was from Wisconsin and went to Kiev alone to meet his lady. She did not show up at the airport to meet him so he called her. She said she would send friend with a car to pick him up. Two men arrived at the airport to pick him up. They robbed him and left him in the middle of nowhere. Luckily he made his way to a road where he was able to hitch a ride back to the airport.

As you can see, correspondence can present many challenges for you. These are just some of them. I will leave you with this thought; "Almost every man that I have ever met who has engaged in Pre-Trip correspondence, even the ones who were eventually successful, has at one time or another experienced many of the problems that I have described above."

THE CORRESPONDENCE TEST (ACURRENT AFFAIR PUTS MY ADVICE TO THE TEST)

For the better part of the past two years I have been trying to educate men on the ''Pitfalls of Correspondence" when trying to find Russian Bride via the Internet. Try as I may, there are still those men that call and write me who don't take my advice when I tell them that you truly cannot rely on correspondence to make your choices on whom you will meet when you travel to Russia and you certainly can't get to know someone through profiles and letters.

Several years ago I was contacted by the daily television news magazine, "A Current Affair." They were doing a story on the Russian Bride industry and they were especially interested in men who had been scammed through correspondence via the Internet. In the course of their extensive research they came across Ukrainetx.com. They recognized that we were very different from most sites in that we tried to be more realistic and cautious in our approach to helping our clients find their one and only. They also saw that there was a great deal of information on our site that specifically addressed the correspondence issue.

After speaking with them several times about my own experiences, those of my clients and the hundreds of other men and women with whom I have spoken and how the whole correspondence industry works, "A Current Affair" asked me to be one of their three Russian Bride experts. They sent an investigative reporter, Michel (pronounced Michael) Bryant to interview me. I told him what I knew about correspondence and how the system worked and shared with him stories of some of the deceptions that I had experienced that were related to correspondence.

A couple of days ago I received a phone call from "A Current Affair" telling me that the Russian Bride story was going to air on July 14th and that I was to be featured in the story. After watching the program I was very pleased at what I saw. Michel, being a true investigative reporter, decided to take me to task and test what I had shared with him. I told him that he would find examples of profiles that had the same lady's pictures, but different names and information. He found exactly that and showed an example on the program. I told him that he would find that some of the girls were not even Russian.

 He found a terrific example of a girl whose profile was on one of the more popular sites who was actually a "soft porn queen" who has her own website called "Next Door Nikki." On the Russian Bride site her name was ''Veronica.'' What happened next even caught me by surprise.

Michel decided that he would sign up on one of the more popular correspondence sites out there and put what I had told him about receiving "canned" letters not written by the actual lady in the profile to the test. Michel did not include height or weight in his profile, nor did he submit any pictures of himself. Instead he submitted a picture of his truck! Within a very short period of time he received ten letters! One of the letters even claimed to be able to tell how honest and sincere Michel was from looking at him, which was a dead give away since he hadn't submitted any pictures of himself]

In short the program was vindication of what I have been saying all along. Although correspondence has been used successfully by some to help them find their bride, for most it has been a frustrating and deceptive experience. You must be careful and use common sense. Even the most seasoned and savvy letter writers like myself have been fooled at one time or another. So again, take my advice. Correspondence is not necessarily necessary when searching for a Bride. If you are going to correspond, you should only use it to try and learn some basic information about the lady and if she will be available when you are in her town. You should only correspond using a site that has some way of verifying the ladies

Existence and awareness of your correspondence. Only use sites that are recommended to you by personal friends and reliable sources that have successfully used the site in their own search. A guy that has never been over and tried to meet any of the girls with whom he has corresponded, merely posting on a forum is not a reliable source. You should try and find someone whom you can speak with on the phone that has been over and been successful to take your cues from. You should ask for references. Never engage in online romance and whatever you do don't send any money!

In closing I just want to say that you shouldn't give up just because you have had a bad experience with a correspondence site. Even though there are some bad apples out there, you can still find honest and sincere ladies that are willing to meet with you, even on some of the more notorious correspondence sites. You just have to know where to look and know what you are doing or at least take the advice of someone who has been successful at this and has helped others to be successful. Take the advice of someone who was able to weed through all of the scammers and misinformation out there and find his true love. She is out there and you can find her, but you must have patience and not be afraid to ask for help.