Jass

Part 2 - Learning more, and more...

Yes, we are coming to you, Steve, and we've already invested so much money into the trip to you, but now we are short of 200 dollars, or 300, or 500. Please send the money, and we will finish
the preparations for the trip to you. All those letters used the same trick to try to lure Steve to send the money. At that point, Steve was sending them an answer which looked something like this: 

Dear Sveta, I am sorry but I can't send you any money, or anything else, until I meet you in person. 

Usually that response heralded the end of his correspondence with those beautiful Russian or Ukrainian girls. Steve was aware that these scams could have been performed by anybody; 

for example, the profile could been created by some man working on laptop in Nigeria, or in India. it was around that time that Steve watched one French movie, and a short part of that movie was set in the Ivory Coast in the city Abidjan. 

There was one scene where in some dirty, dingy room, a few young men were sitting on the floor with laptops, and they were working on the laptops scamming people, impersonating some girls, or boys. They were calling the victims of the scam pigeons. Being a good con artist was their way of making a living – a successful living. 

 Steve abandoned the idea of looking for girls in Ukraine, Russia or Belarus. As so far, there he had only met the scammers. And he had had a new idea, How about trying Thailand, Vietnam or the Philippines? 

The girls from those countries are well known for their beauty and for their very strong family values. He found some dating websites which had girls mainly from those countries. He started chatting with one girl who was of Vietnamese origin but was living in the US, in Kentucky. 

Her name was Ngoc, and she told him that she lived in some small town, south of Lexington, Kentucky. She was 37 years old and had two boys, an 8year-old and a 6-year-old. She was a widow, had previously lost her husband to some illness. She told Steve that the reason she was on the dating site was because she did not want to live alone, and that her boys needed a father figure. Steve was happy with this explanation: 

 I would have an important role to those boys, he thought. The first thing Steve did was make a video call, he wanted to make sure he is really writing to her and not to some impersonating con artist. And he initiated a few video calls, but something was wrong. At first, he did not understand what was going on. But soon he began to develop the suspicion that Ngoc was not talking to him directly, but that instead he was watching some previously recorded videos. 

The suspicion that she was also a scammer did rise up, after Ngoc asked Steve for her birthday gift. She was apparently turning 38 years old, and she had asked Steve for a gift, and not just for any gift, but for very specific gift, for some jewellery in gold. This request made Steve almost sure that she was a scammer too. 

 He did not tell her yet what he thought about her, he wanted to wait just a little bit longer. Steve told her that he preferred to give her, her present in person; 

he did not want to send it. She was very angry with Steve, threatening to break up with him. Steve did not have to wait very long for Ngoc to ask him for a favour again. 

This time she told him that the younger son had accidentally swallowed a wooden toothpick, and she had to get him to the emergency room, so they could operate to remove the dangerously lodged toothpick. She was telling Steve that it had been a successful but very expensive operation, and that she was short of money. She asked him to lend her a few thousand dollars. She promised him that she'd give back everything soon. 

 At this point, Steve told Ngoc what he thought about her financial request. And that was the end of another scamming story. During the time when Steve was dealing with Ngoc, he had been the unfortunate subject of a few other attempts to scam him by girls living in the US, apparently Vietnamese. 

 There was one girl who was from the Philippines, and who did not ask Steve for any present. She only wanted to chat with him and get to know him better, and her name was Jasmine. Jasmine was 21 years old; 

Steve was 51 years old. He told her that he was much older and asked her whether she was sure she wanted to continue chatting and writing to him despite the age gap between them. Jasmine told him that for her, his age was not important but what was important to her was what was inside his heart: whether he was sincere, if he told the truth, whether she could trust him. Steve was surprised by her point of view, and he was suspicious about her expectations. He was sure that she would try to scam him soon. He was waiting patiently for her first request for a gift, or some money. That was around the time when he was still dealing with Ngoc. Ngoc, at that time, was his primary interest, Jasmine was only someone interesting and different as she was very young and yet somehow still interested in him, but she was not asking for any favours or gifts.

Steve mostly communicated with Jasmine through written emails, but they soon moved to WhatsApp and started doing video calls from time to time. Steve was not that serious about her because of her age; she was young, too young, he thought, but he kept up contact with her out of sheer curiosity. As time passed by, he broke it off with Ngoc and stopped answering the other scammers, and the only girl to whom he was still talking was Jasmine.

 
Already a few months had flown by as he and Jasmine continuously write and talked to each other. Steve considered Jasmine to be a very beautiful girl; 

she was in some strange way almost unreal to him, because she was so young and so beautiful. It was making no sense to him how such a young and beautiful girl could be interested in a 51-year-old grandpa. He started reading about girls from the Philippines; about their expectations, traditions, the stories about relationships between Filipino girls and foreigners. And to his surprise, he was reading many stories that girls from Philippines, and not only from that country, but also girls from Vietnam or Thailand, or China or other countries from that region of the World, were accepting of the age gap, sometimes even of a very big difference in age, in favour of the good, stable situation of the man. 

They could put up with a big age difference if the man was serious and could support safe living and a steady relationship. Western European girls could do that too, he thought, - actually, girls anywhere in the world can do it, if the man is a millionaire. But in the case of girls from East Asia, expectations about a man's position, and wealth, seemed to be lower. It was enough for the man to have some place to live, even a basic and modest one. If he had a stable job, just an average job which brings enough money just to live, that was enough. He read that they were like this just in the hope of changing their location and moving to Europe or North America. For those girls from East Asia, that move was already a big upgrade. 

According to these cultural opinions, Steve's situation was already attractive: 

he lived in England, in one of the major Western European countries. He had his own small flat, and he had his job, the same job he'd been working for many years. He had a car, an old one but still working very well. He also made a little money on the side here and there. He was doing well.

Steve continued talking to Jasmine, with even more interest now, after reading all those stories about East Asian girls. But he was still suspicious of Jasmine's intentions. A few months ago, Steven had got a surprise when Jasmine told him that she had applied for a job as an au pair in Europe and had been accepted. She was going to work for a family in Denmark, in a small town called Vejle. When Jasmine got that job and moved there, they talked much more often, as they were now almost in the same time zone. After she came to Denmark, there was only a one-hour difference in time between them. Before, when Jasmine was in the Philippines, the time difference was 8 hours. Also, the quality of their video calls got much better. 

They mostly spoke late at night; it was the time when both of them, were free after a day at work. The calls between them had become regular, like a ritual, each had in the other, someone with whom to talk, and kill loneliness. 

 Jasmine now was geographically much closer than she had been before; she was just two hours away from him. If she were to jump on a plane, it would take no more than two hours. Steve wanted to fly to her, but Jasmine was saying if he came to Denmark then he would have to stay in a hotel, as she couldn't have guests. Steve invited her to England, and Jasmine was happy with the invitation, she wanted to see England. Steve told her that he would help her with all the visa formalities. Jasmine wanted to do it, but she had to wait for her holiday, and the family that she was working for would have to agree to her holiday.

to be continued