From Russia, with love.

The following post was written in a few hours with no illustration to accompany it. It is a true story that took place over the past few weeks. And once you read this, you will realize how ridiculously fast this all went for me. Although the situation is written in a way to be humorous and entertaining to read, it deals with the consequences of internet scams. 


Without further ado, I present the latest installment of TMZ (The Majestic Zeebracorn - weird I just realized that the acronym is the same as that stupid paparazzi show).


***


Everybody likes to make jokes about how bad their parents are with computers.


This one is about my stepdad's lack of internet safety.


So about a month ago my stepdad received an email from a stranger. I'm not exactly sure what she said, but considering the situation it was probably along the lines of 'I saw your picture and instantly felt some sort of connection with you.' 


Almost everyone knows you don't respond to strange emails when you don't even know how they got your email address - a major red flag. Not my stepdad; apparently he decides to send her a message as well.


The 'woman', who called herself Yulya, attached pictures of 'herself' to every message. She was gorgeous and looked like she was using portfolio pictures from a modeling agency. Some were of her posed against some spectacular scenery, while others had her half naked and posed in alluring positions.


The red flag of fishy-ness waved mercilessly.


I'm a bit hazy on the details of their budding romance, but a few exchanges later she was confessing her love to him and how she wanted to come and visit and get married.


It was around this time that he started flaunting her off - showing all of his friends 'his Yulya.' They tried to warn him that she may not be who she seems,  but he didn't want to hear it. He figured God was finally blessing him, which couldn't have been further from the truth.


"How can you say that about her?" He would ask. "She has said nicer things to me that anyone else ever has."


Maybe because she has never met you and she wants something.


So then she starts saying that she wants to come and visit him and a bunch of other promises. She says she needs to buy a passport and also some fee that you must pay if you want to leave Russia. I'm not going to say that this part of the story is false because I don't know anything about transcontinental travel, but I do know she asked for money.


She needed to $1,300 to cover her expenses so that she could leave Russia and she wanted my stepdad to pay them, since she had already a few thousand for her passport and tickets.


I don't know if he ever paid her the money (and I don't want to know) or if she found a few grand between her couch cushions, but soon enough she had the money to come and visit.


It was scheduled for her to arrive the day after my sister's birthday.


So our stepdad asked me and my sister to clean the house and make it look good for her arrival. He asked us to do this on the eve of my sister's birthday.


I spent the entire night before her birthday cleaning the house so that my sister wouldn't have to.


I also had to decorate the house and get her cupcakes and do everything else because he couldn't be bothered.


I spent my sister's birthday quite tired, but it was fun and I hope that she at least enjoyed herself.


It was finally the big day: the day that Yulya was supposed to fly in. She said that she would get here at four in the afternoon and to be ready to pick her up when she landed. 


Around three o' clock my stepdad found and email in his inbox from Yulya. It explained that she was not on the plane and that she had spent the whole day in customs. Her story was that she was stopped by customs before she boarded and said that she still owed the government money for a loan she took out for her flat.


So then Yulya said if my stepdad wanted to see her, she needed $2,000 to pay off her debts. She also mentioned some weird thing that if he did pay it, the government would give him $50,000 for some bullshit reason or another.


At long last my stepdad finally realized that it was a scam and quit responding to her. He's still a bit broken up about it, but hopefully he'll learn his lesson on the dangers of the internet.