Ukraine Romance Tour Investigation – Part 2

By fancy brochures, photos, videos, trained assistants many foreign men get caught into trap, starting to pay thousands of US Dollars and EUR for ONLY promises nobody had ever planned to keep.

In Ukraine we have a saying: It is a bad habit to count someone else’s money. We are sure in case with scammers that saying shouldn’t nor wouldn’t work. In order to demonstrate how scam works and how much money is earned by those dating agencies on such romance tours, let’s do some calculations…

We know there were 21 men in Oliver’s group, each paid 5,000 USD for the tour, which makes it a total revenue of 105,000 USD. That was a total sum of direct payments to dating agency by 21 men who came to Nikolaev. Airline tickets had to be purchased by each visitor by himself. Dating agency provided group transfer from Odessa to Nikolaev and back by minibus, meeting with ladies, accommodation in a hotel for 7 nights and a personal translator who was also each visitor’s assistant. Since we had to calculate an estimate of what was earned by agency and we already knew total revenue, we are moving on to calculating agency’s expenses…

Group transfer by Mercedes Sprinter minibus between Odessa and Nikolaev costs 200 US Dollars one way, making it a total of 400 US Dollars for roundtrip. Cheapest room in Continent hotel that was offered regularly costs 22 US Dollars per night, but we think because of the group booking it may be offered with up to 50% discount. We also think many men upgrade the room and pay additional full price for better rooms as happened with Oliver. But we will assume everyone stays in those crap rooms with no hot water in the shower, so overall for 7 nights in hotel for the group was paid by dating agency 3000 US Dollars maximum (22 USD x 7 nights x 21 men) minus discount. We are almost sure that price was even less than 2000 US Dollars because discounts for group stay can be as much as 50% and many men upgraded their rooms by paying full price for them.

We suppose, two lunches in restaurant were absolutely free for organizers because each man paid 30 USD for drinks which covered the food as well (FYI, one glass of beer in Ukrainian restaurant costs around 1 US Dollar and a glass of wine around 2 US Dollars). We really doubt someone could drink 30 glasses of beer or 15 glasses of wine! Even if those 630 USD per lunch was exceeded a bit, we are sure organizers don’t pay anything extra. Simply because they recommend that restaurant for the future meetings and there is a way for scam by a restaurant as well, but we will come to that later.

Rent of conference hall in Continent hotel with all available equipment (which was not needed in this case) where ladies met with men costs 130 US Dollars per day, but there is a 35% discount if at least 15 rooms are occupied in hotel by members of the event. That makes a total of 300 US Dollars (130 USD x 3 days – 35%) for conference hall usage in that hotel.

So, calculations show, out of collected 105,000 USD from 21 men – total expenses up to this moment are less than 4,000 USD (but we think it is less than 3,000 USD because of group discount in hotel).

Let’s move on to the next part of our investigation. How will you get scammed in restaurants? How much cashback from each bill will be returned to lady and translator? Continue reading…