[I know lots of"honorable"men who got screwed royally]
On the issue of fraud, Russia is like the wild west. Just a few months ago I paid $350 to have an apartment in Moscow for a week. When I returned with my suitcases 4 hours later...I learned the door had 2 locks and I only had one key. Their business model was to give out that one key to a new sucker every day, sometimes renting the apartment for a month with deposit.
There is no way to go to the police in Russia because the police will then ask you for your registration, which is never going to be perfect. Then the criminals threaten to make it so you never get a visa to Russia again.
The Danish guy who was shot by an airgun last week...the criminal was immediately let loose on bail and given the home address of the victim. The victim got scared and left Russia back to Denmark and the would-be murderer will now go free without anyone to bring charges against him.
In terms of women scamming American men...they are very easy to spot. First of all: never send money to a woman whom you've never met before. Period. Secondly, if she does know you and suddenly tells you that she lost her purse after withdrawing a year's salary ($2000 in the Ukraine) for her father based on mortgaging their apartment...know this to be the official Ukrainian setup line.
But...that said...Russia is still filled with the most wonderful of people and well worth going to. The women are very conservative, pro-military and pro-Bush at least in terms of the WOT including Iraq War. And they are not paranoid...they will wonder what these new US government forms are supposed to be all about after March 6th.
Orthodox Christian Russian women often do not have premarital sex for at least 4 months if at all after they meet a guy. Russia is not a place for sex tourists anymore.
Never go to the Russian police.
The only way to get anything done is Russia is through the Russian mafia. Without which one is helpless. They are in fact easy to deal with. They are just looking to make a buck. Something any capitalist can understand.
I can tell you about one situation where I had taken a lot of laundry to the cleaners. But every time I went there the clothes were not ready. This went on for weeks. When it was clear to me that they were not going to return my rather expense clothes, I called Vitaly, my uhhh host. Three hours later the cleaners delivered my clothes to my flat.
It's a man's world.