Before joining chinalovematch.net, I'd been ripped off financially by a professional looking internet dating website called Chnlove.com  -  part of the self titled "QPid Network".  Some suggest this website is related to the infamous scam website asianbeauties.com, but I’ve yet to confirm this.  In any case, suffice to say that BOTH these sites are best stayed well clear of. To this end, here's my story, or at least a part of it.

“Start free trial now – 1000s of beautiful girls are waiting for YOU!”

I blinked and read the caption on the computer monitor in front of me.  Then I gazed admiringly at the photos on the Chnlove.com webpage, showing multiple gorgeous Chinese ladies.

“Man, you’ve gotta be kidding – this site is just what I’ve been searching for!”,  I exclaimed inwardly.

I couldn’t believe my luck.  I was a rather depressed, recently divorced guy who’d hit rock bottom emotionally and now was attempting to climb back out of the abyss of loneliness that’d been unwelcomely enveloping me for months.

Quickly I filled in the website online application, including my profile details.  My self description was brief, I said only one generic sounding sentence along the lines of "Average guy looking for an average girl who is serious, sincere and honest in her intentions and wishes to meet a Western man".  I submitted no photo of myself.  Without delay, I was then sent an activation email, including a personal ID number that enabled me to log in to chnlove.com. 

A couple of minutes later, I received an introductory message from them as follows.

“A package with 20 minutes free chat coupons & 5 free mails has been added to your account, start contacting your favorite ladies now!”

Wow!  Almost immediately I was ready to go  - this seemingly welcoming site wasn’t mucking around.  Everything was happening fast.

Within just another two or three minutes, to my surprise, plenty of emails and chat invitations from lovely ladies began spontaneously popping up on my computer screen.  These were not just Chinese, but other nationalities as well.   Chnlove.com had partner websites, where ladies from China, South-east Asia, Ukraine and Russia, as well as Latin America –  all could be contacted.  What a delightful smorgasbord of tempting, exotic dishes for an emotionally impoverished Westerner like me!

I was quite bemused at the frenetic pace of how everything was happening.  In the bottom right hand corner of my computer, many little boxes busily kept appearing, each one showing a photo of a beautiful lady with an icon that could be clicked on to either see her profile, read a personal message from her or to chat directly with her.  When I clicked on the “Read Message” section, inviting notes from each lady would appear such as,

“It's a bit embarrassing, dear, but I have to tell you that I haven't kissed a man for quite some time already... I am not even sure how our first kiss will go. By the way, do you like kissing? Do you enjoy it passionately or do you like to touch your woman's lips with yours only slightly, just to tell send a message to her body?

I... I do miss it very much. I think about how it would feel and just can't get it out of my head. It's a bit funny, isn't it, dear?

I hope that when we first meet, we will experience this... Won't we? Be like very close people to each other, not just like the very first date where we just look at each other and afraid to touch.

Do you miss all of this too?

With warmth from my heart and body”

I couldn't help but read all these beguiling notes that kept popping up on my computer from women whose profiles I'd never viewed before, including some that were addressed to me personally, mentioning my name. I could hardly believe it.  Such a great response to a profile with no photo and only a very brief, generalised self description!  A little incredulous yet secretly hopeful, I muttered under my breath, "Are these for real?"

And the photos.  These ladies were all stunning – there wasn’t a plain looking person anywhere to be seen!  I felt at that time I was in female nirvana, a marvellous paradise that’d been withheld from me for all my life, but finally it’d been found. 

"Are Chinese and Russian ladies all this beautiful?  Yes, I think they must be!"  These were the wondrous thoughts running through my head.  This was the first time I'd ever subscribed to an international dating website like this, so my naive innocence was showing.

Examples of messages that kept appearing on my computer screen without any input whatsoever from me are below.

Lady 1

“Hi sweety! I was looking for you! Can we meet?

Are you looking for me? Do you remember? We met once upon a dream!!!

What a nice guy!! Are you real or I'm dreaming?

I want to be your present in red ribbon!!!

I'm here, alone, and where are you? Come to me”

Lady 2

“You make my heart smile.

My heart is with you.

I fell so lonely now, can you help me?”

Lady 3

“Though we have never met, I feel close to you.

Hold me now. Can you?

I want you, I need you, please come to me.”

At that time, even though I felt vaguely dubious about all these greetings, my niggling doubts were subconsciously repressed.  Feeling socially isolated if not downright depressed at that time, I really wanted to believe in their authenticity;  I longed for a lady who loved me and who I could in turn love.  I wanted to be finally rid of the debilitating loneliness I’d been feeling so acutely for so long.  When one's feeling emotionally bereft, most definitely one's mind isn't as rational or levelheaded as normally it would or should be.  The more isolated you feel, the more vulnerable and susceptible you become, almost in a direct correlation.

One Chinese lady in particular seemed special.  I clicked on her profile.  The first few sentences read as follows.

“Hello my dear,

How are you? I hope my letter and my sunny smile find you are happy there :)  I am from Shenzen, China. I am very glad to find your profile today. I am attracted to you after reading your profile, so i can't wait to write you this letter. I hope you are still available for me? I am here looking for a lifetime relationship. I don't play games here.

I am not sure if you like business woman or not, but i want to tell you i am a successful business woman. I have an insurance company here. I have do this business for 20 years. Do you mind your wife making more money than you??”

I was amazed.  Not only was this gorgeous 43 year old apparently attracted to me, but she owned a business and earned more money than me also!    And her reassuring words “I don't play games here”  helped assuage my fears.  I truly wanted to feel that someone as sweet and kind looking as her had to be one hundred per cent real.  How wrong I was later proven to be.

Soon enough, I couldn’t take it any more.  I felt compelled to contact some of these beautiful goddesses who seemed so sincere.  Surely such charming words and such beguiling smiles couldn’t be anything but genuine?  I became hooked on this website, just as it had been so carefully planned and designed to do.

As it turned out though, once I opened up my wallet and started paying money to Chnlove.com via credit card over the next two or three weeks, my joyous dreams slowly and  insidiously dissolved into nothingness.  Evaporated completely, like a plate of warm water under a scorching, noon day desert sun. My naivety and loneliness was grossly exploited by professional scammers.  My emotional gullibility was taken advantage of by a bunch of criminals without conscience. 

In short, I started paying to chat online to some of the ladies who presented themselves so glamorously to me, then began phoning them.  To my chagrin, I discovered the costs of this were enormous, sometimes over one hundred dollars per session.  Credits in my account quickly ran out, time after time. 

Unexpected anomalies also appeared. For example, I was introduced to ladies who could speak no English, despite their profiles specifying to the contrary.  I was given ladies' contact phone numbers that were never answered.  I bought expensive "gifts" for some of them that were never acknowledged.  When I eventually did manage to chat online to a lady who could understand English, the conversation would go in circles.  I couldn't pin anyone down to a specific personal email address or home phone number., despite being told  from some that they "loved" me.  All this was incredibly frustrating to me as at first I had no idea what was really going on or who in fact I was actually involved with.

This baffling yet tantalising obfuscation went on and on until eventually it slowly dawned on me I was being treated like a moron.  A sucker.  I had no option but to accept the cold reality of the situation, as unacceptable and utterly unpalatable as it was.  Up til then, I'd  considered myself a rather smart and worldly person, but in this instance was forced to admit that I'd been badly conned by a cartel of very slick internet scammers, criminals who were extremely polished, proficient and practised at their deceptive craft, carefully honed as it no doubt had been for a long time. 

Upon contemplating it later, my mind boggled at the vast numbers of lonely men who like me, must have've been cheated on a global scale by this and other related dating sites.  I'm not talking about months here, but YEARS, as these nefarious businesses are amazingly still operating, seemingly impervious to prosecution or the law.  I have no idea why Interpol can't stop them but the very fact that they still exist, illustrates how devilishly cunning and clever they are.

Rather than chatting to lovely ladies online, I later learnt that often I’d  probably been chatting to hairy rock apes with beards, bad breath and tattoos.  Phrases such as "Russian mafia" were mentioned to me as potentially being involved.  This wouldn't surprise me as these sites are extremely professional.  They're not operated by a bunch of nerds from back bedrooms - the whole operation is way bigger than this, probably raking in tens of millions of dollars every year.  Just as I had been, there are so many lonely men out there leading lives of quiet desperation, ready to grasp at any hope, any straw blowing in the wind, that might help alleviate the awful emotional cavity  - the gnawing hollowness -  felt within themselves.

Whoever it was, during this period, it seemed I’d been gripped by an avaricious octopus with multiple tentacles, each covered in many hungry suckers, all doing their damndest to insatiably siphon from me not only my money, but my ever diminishing pride, happiness and dignity as well. 

The words, “There’s no fool like an old fool,” kept unwelcomely repeating themselves in my screwed up head, over and over again.  I’d been well and truly taken for an expensive ride by chnlove.com and the “Qpid Network”.  A journey to nowhere, except to a slimey suburb called Disenchantment in the terrible town of Disappointment, located in the rotten state known as Rip Off.

More to follow, if I have the stomach to write further about it, which given the bad memories of it all, is decidedly problematic.