It is not by mere chance that Anastasia International has become the world's leading Russian/American Introductory Agency. For more than ten years, our continual commitment to honesty, integrity and hard work on behalf of our clients has allowed us to set and raise the standards of our industry as a whole. The history of our industry has been one of honest agencies providing their clients with genuinely valuable services in the midst of other, less scrupulous agencies, whose misdeeds tarnish the reputation of all.

Anastasia International is the first and only agency to tackle the issue of fraud protection head-on. There are other agencies that run an honest business, but in our industry, that is not enough to make any real difference to the consumer. Here's why

No agency can operate wholly by themselves. All major agencies depend on dozens, (or in Anastasia's case, several hundred) small agencies located all across the former Soviet Union to find ladies and perform services for clients. In other words, whenever a consumer purchases services from a particular agency, even a big one, he has to keep in mind that the agency itself, is in fact depending on many, many other Eastern European agencies that operate in the ladies' local cities. So, even if agency #1 is honest, they are depending on agencies #2, #3, #4, etc. If the other agencies involved are dishonest, or if a particular lady is dishonest, then the client suffers, regardless of how honestly agency #1 conducts business. So, again, a particular agency simply "being honest" is not enough to protect consumers; forceful action and serious commitment are required.

Anastasia International has spent the last three years and nearly a million dollars creating an industry-wide business system, designed to ferret out dishonest agencies while helping honest agencies to prosper. Creating this comprehensive business system to protect and serve our clients has been a Herculean task and a huge financial risk for us; but we believe strongly that the long term survival of our industry depends on someone stepping up to the plate and creating a system that enforces discipline on the industry as a whole. The success of our AnastasiaWeb.com system, which provides protection to our clients by forcing discipline on over 450 Eastern European agencies simultaneously, is the reason Anastasia International has come to dominate this industry.

No other company has come close to investing the kind of time, money and energy necessary to create a system that forces participating Eastern European agencies to operate by strict US business standards. Anastasia International is the only company in our industry to even attempt a consumer protection campaign of this magnitude.

• Anastasia is the only agency that has a full time staff specifically devoted to spot-checking correspondence for suspicious activity and reacting to reports of suspicious correspondence that we receive from our clients.

• Whenever there is any question of possible fraudulent or inappropriate activity on our web site, we launch a quick and thorough investigation, document our findings, report our findings to the client(s) involved, and take appropriate action.

• In all cases where inappropriate or fraudulent behavior is found to be the case, we remove the lady from our system, fine her agency and refund our client(s)' credits or money.

• Second or third offenses by an agency are fined more severely.

• A fourth offense results in the agency being permanently removed from our system.

• On AnastasiaWeb.com, every single woman that lists herself on our site is independently contacted by our staff to confirm her identity and her address, so we know (1) the woman exists, (2) she knows she is a part of this system and (3) she is confirming with us that she is interested in finding an American husband and she is interested in participating in this.

• No other agency comprehensively confirms the identity of each and every woman on their site. Every other agency in this industry, including our major competitors, relies on the local agencies to confirm the ladies' identities.

The recent changes in our industry cannot be over emphasized. This industry was founded by dozens of little Mom & Pop agencies helping American men meet Eastern European ladies via postal mail correspondence. In those days, the small agencies in Eastern Europe made their money by selling the addresses of their local ladies to American-owned agencies, who then sold the addresses to their American clients. With the advent of email correspondence sites, these ladies' addresses (the bread and butter of the small local agencies) became worthless, almost overnight. The days of agencies simply selling the same information again and again are over.

Now, in order to survive in this industry, the small agencies in Europe are required to contact the ladies, to make sure that the ladies read their incoming emails, to make sure that the ladies respond to their emails, etc. In other words, they have to actually work for their living, instead of selling static data over and over, and some of these agencies are resentful. From the beginning, our attitude toward the small agencies has been simple: Anyone who tries to scam our clients is scamming us, and we will react with all the force we can muster, every time.

Many of these small agencies feel that we are in fact bullying them by spot-checking their ladies' correspondence, investigating suspicious emails and fining them for violations of our rules. They see a trend where they are growing more and more dependent, because they are no longer selling a product (addresses), but now they are performing a service for our customers and getting paid for it on a piece-meal basis. They participate anyway, because it is the only way they are going to make money, but some are not very happy about it. Others are viewing this positive change for the consumer as an opportunity to professionalize themselves and grow. There are several participating agencies that are flourishing, and opening additional offices in several cities. These are the kind of agencies that Anastasia supports, and we applaud the great strides that have been made by many of these participating agencies.

Many men are under the mistaken impression that correspondence by itself is a complete tool for finding a woman. This is absolutely not true. Correspondence is a very valuable tool, to be sure, but it can only do one thing:

It can help you determine whether it is worth your while to travel to Eastern Europe to find a companion.

Any expectations beyond that are unfounded and unrealistic. Correspondence, and even phone calls to a stranger are NOT the same thing as meeting face to face. Correspondence is NOT the beginning of a relationship. Many gentlemen want to believe that correspondence is the beginning of a relationship, but they are 100% incorrect.

It is very simple There is no way you can simply sit in front of your computer and find a period. To find a companion in Russia/Ukraine, you MUST go there yourself. Correspondence can only help you decide if you want to go. This is a key concept that any intelligent man or woman involved in correspondence needs to understand. Until you meet the person face to face and until you spend time with them in person, no relationship exists.

The standard procedure for both men and women, when beginning correspondence, is to list a brief description of themselves either in a catalog or on a website, and then write a personable, but general "introductory letter" where they describe themselves and their life in some detail; what they are looking for in a mate, etc. They also ask pertinent questions to potential mates. The men and women both address these letters to each person they are sending it to and they personalize them to a small degree, but they are general letters, trying to give more info about themselves than is listed in the brief paragraph in their posting. That is the only objective of introductory letters. Men send copies of their introductory letters to many, many women, and women send copies of their introductory letters to many men. Once both people have a better idea of who they are dealing with, then they can decide to begin personal correspondence. This procedure has been standard for everyone since our industry began, whether the correspondence is by snail-mail or email.

Agencies that perform match-making services, as opposed to just introductory services, take the further step of searching through databases for their clients and sending their introductory letters to perspective matches.

The AnastasiaWeb email forwarding system links men in America with ladies in Eastern Europe who are represented by over 450 local agencies in the ladies' home towns. The local agencies sign up on a separate Russian language website, and they are allowed to list their ladies. Some agencies perform matchmaking services for their ladies by looking through our database of men and forwarding a lady's introductory letter to men in our system. We consider this practice to be a proper, wholly ethical and appropriate matchmaking service performed for the ladies on our system by their local agencies. We do not consider this practice to be fraudulent correspondence. Now, if an agency writes further letters "on behalf" of the lady, after the Introductory Letter, that is absolutely considered fraud by Anastasia, and we will take forceful action against them.

Consumers are also sometimes under the mistaken impression that, because a girl's photo is on an agency's website, it means that the agency is vouching for this girl; that they are in essence vouching for her character and trustworthiness. Unfortunately, this is simply not possible. No company can vouch for the character of any man or woman using their services. No human being can look into the heart and soul of another human being and anticipate incorrect behavior, especially that of a stranger.

The only thing an honest agency can do is exactly what the police department does; keep a vigilant eye out and aggressively react to inappropriate behavior after it has come to their attention. At Anastasia, we do that every single day. We strongly urge our clients to immediately report anything that seems even a little bit strange in their correspondence. We then put our team on the job of looking into the case, speaking to all the parties involved and figuring out exactly what is going on. Then we take appropriate action to protect our clients every single time.

What is crucial to remember is that, if you can discover that someone is not being honest with you in correspondence, that is a valuable thing to know. That is part of the valuable information correspondence offers you. If you write a few letters to a lady, and she contradicts herself in her emails, then you might start thinking, "I might not want to pencil her in for too much time when I go over there because, I don't think she is being honest." Obviously, it's better to make that decision before you spend big money on a visit.

If you are writing to someone and anything seems amiss, send out an email to your agency right away and let them know, "something is wrong here." The response of any professional organization should invariably be to investigate it, come to a clear determination of the facts, tell you what they found in detail, and if there is a problem, resolve it. If there is a misunderstanding, they should make the facts clear. If there is fraud going on, they should give you your money back and make sure that the people who are committing this fraud are removed from their system. These are the only measures that any agency is in a position to take; to react to problems, and react in such a way that it sets an example for others. This is precisely our approach at Anastasia International.

When all is said and done, it is impossible for any agency to anticipate and prevent all instances of inappropriate behavior or fraudulent correspondence. The only thing major agencies can do is react to it, and react in such a way that it sets an example for everyone else involved in the network.

AnastasiaWeb has already made a huge difference in weeding out the bad guys from this industry, but we are not omnipotent, no one is. The police department, the FBI, the CIA, nobody in this world can anticipate bad behavior. The only thing anyone is ever in a position to do is react to it.

To put the scale of the problem in perspective, we have roughly 400,000 pieces of email moving through our system every week. We get 20-30 complaints about suspicious activity a week; and about half of those cases turn out to be misunderstandings or gentlemen having unrealistic expectations about the system and how it works.

Running an email-based correspondence system like AnastasiaWeb is an incredibly complex task, which is the reason we are the only company that has been able to pull it off effectively. Instilling discipline into the 450+ agencies involved has been our biggest challenge. Has it been totally smooth? No. Have some ladies and agencies attempted to cheat? Yes. Have we found them out? Yes. Have we stood behind our clients and made things right for them? Every single time without question, without hesitation, and we will continue to do so.

Anastasia International is not perfect, but there is no question that we are the best.

Have a look at Ladies Black List

Send Comments and suggestions to:

Anastasia International, Inc.
40 High St Suite #1, Bangor, Maine 04401