This story starts in Kyiv. Before the war. Before the fame that Ukrainians have garnered over the past year. When it was just another city, in an Eastern European country. A bustling center of a very friendly and inviting culture. So, where did things go wrong with our subject and how can she be stopped? We will attempt to figure that out in this blog.

I will start by telling you that, with my hand to God, everything I am about to tell you is the truth as I know it. This site was not created out of spite and is not a story of a jilted lover crying about a woman who left him. There never was a real relationship to leave. The entire thing was lies and manipulation designed to extract money with as little effort put in as possible. We were not star crossed lovers as I often joked. There was no force keeping us apart. As it turns out, Olena invented excuses, situations, and problems in order to avoid being together. Yet, through it all she kept up the act of wanting to and continued to take money and other things from me.

At the end, when some truth finally was revealed, she had absolutely no remorse or apology. She attempted to blame it all squarely on me, claiming she did nothing wrong. She said everything she did is “normal” for Ukrainians. I informed her that what she was doing is illegal in USA and I filed a police report. Within 24 hours she fled to Canada to avoid prosecution in the USA, before returning to her village in Ukraine. Though I share opinions at times, I tried to keep the facts as close to what I actually can prove as possible. I did rely on her for some of those facts and I tried to point that out where necessary.

I gave her the opportunity to correct anything I may have gotten wrong on this site. Promising to delete anything untrue. She found nothing. I even offered to completely remove this site and not pursue any charges against her if she took responsibility for her actions, told the truth about all she did, and offered a genuine apology. She refused my offer. She is completely and entirely incapable of telling the truth in any situation, for any reason. Her default response is to lie and deceive. It is normal for her and she sees nothing wrong with it. I did nothing to cause her to feel like she ever had to lie to me. I accepted her just the way she was. I never reacted poorly or negatively to any truth she told, I only responded this way when she lied. She did not lie because she felt she had to, or she was trying to protect me, or because she did not want to hurt me. It is actually the opposite of all those things. She lies just for fun, to hurt others and manipulate them into doing what she wants. She will use whatever tactics she can to get her way with you.

I share my story, not to hurt Olena, but to hopefully protect others from falling victim to Olena and other Ukrainian women who do these scams. I now understand that this is a common thing in their culture and I wish I had a warning like this at the beginning. I also pray that Olena will learn from this and not attempt to play with the lives of any other people in the future. That she can be honest and live a good, clean life, free from all of the hatred and greed that consumes her. I think she has a very long way to go to achieve this and it will take a maximal amount of effort. I never saw a capability for this kind of undertaking within her.

I have been sent messages on this site by some deceived Ukrainians to blame me for her actions. Some even visited my home and vandalized it. Despite all of the evidence I present here, these Ukrainians still cannot understand how it is wrong to steal money from people. For them, these crimes are a normal part of life. They are used to these scammers. They believe that a bad person is someone who says that stealing is wrong.

Not all were negative though. A few people who know Olena’s true nature reached out to share information and support. Two stay in contact and update information. This help is greatly appreciated and I am grateful for these warm souls who do the right thing.

In total, I spent almost seven weeks in Ukraine and fell in love with the country and its people. I enjoyed all of the places I visited and all of the people I met there. I am still friends with many of them and they are dear to me. It makes me very sad to think that there are so many people there with such logic in their heads.

Olena is not the only one I helped after the war started. Other friends were in dire straits and needed money or plane tickets, which I was happy to pay for. I sent thousands of dollars to others and everyone was very grateful. I expected nothing from them but the gratitude they showed. Of course, I’m not upset that I helped Olena. I would have helped her even if she had not conned me into believing she loved me and wanted to be with me. I am upset that she lied to me to gain my trust and help. That I was extorted by the lies and acting she did. I do forgive her though, because I understand that she is a sick person from a culture where this sort of thing is common place. To her the act of running these scams is not evil at all. Just a way to make a living.

I met Olena in Ukraine during the summer of 2021. I was traveling through Europe at the end of COVID restrictions and happened to find myself in Kyiv for a Van’s sponsored, International skateboarding and bike trick competition. This event was well worth the detour. While in Kyiv I flipped through Tinder and came across the profile of Olena. I swiped right, as did she. We exchanged messages for a few weeks, making plans to meet on two occasions, but both times something came up and the meeting was missed.

The story now moves to the small town of Ternopil, west of Kyiv. Olena stated that her grandmother was dying and she needed to be in her village to be near her at the end. I agreed to take a train to meet with her, at her request. I booked the best room in town, and arranged the meeting. By this point we had been chatting by text for almost four weeks (27 days) and had already grown close.

We first met in front of my hotel. I must admit, I hardly recognized her at the first meeting. She looked nothing at all like any of the photos from her Tinder profile or those which she had sent to me. Since I had already come all that way to Ternopil by overnight train, just for her, and I already liked the person I had grown to know for a month, I gave her a chance anyway. Despite feeling like I had been catfished.

From my hotel we walked along the lake, through the zoo, and eventually ended up at a beautiful dinner. After dinner she returned to her village, but we made plans to see one another the next day. The evening had gone really well and I was glad I had stuck around to spend time with her. The next day we met again and she spent the night with me in my bed, but we didn’t have sex or connect physically. The refusal of intimacy, mental connection, or any kind of physical contact became a pattern that I experienced throughout the few days we got to physically spent together over the next 16 months.

She hadn’t yet asked me for anything other than meals and train tickets, but it was expected that I pay for all of what we do. I didn’t know her financial situation and being wealthy I could afford it, so I didn’t think too much of it at the time.

I had only planned for two days in Ternopil before continuing on to Odesa. I offered to stay with Olena longer, but she insisted I go, saying she needed to care for her grandmother. She also told me to find a girl in Odesa, which seemed like a very strange thing to say at the time. I still don’t understand why she would say these bizarre things occasionally. It wasn’t jealous or insecure, but seemed quite serious. Still, She promised to meet me in Kyiv in a week’s time. That was the first broken promise, of which there would be many, but I stupidly continued to stay in touch.

I don’t know exactly when she marked me to run a scam on. Looking back at those days in Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine she was already setting me up, but I have to admit that all the signs were there, I just missed them. I admit that I did not hide my wealth, profession, and status. At a certain point after I returned home to USA, she began convincing me that she wanted to be with me and that we would be together. She began asking for money, clothes, a new iPhone, etc. She wasn’t offering anything in return and if these weren’t supplied, she would get an attitude and cut things off. She threw me away and ended things between us dozens of times. So many in fact that I lost count. The first several times she threw me away, I got upset and even blocked her a few times, but somehow we always started talking again. We always gravitated back to each other. Either she would reach out to me, or I would reach back out to her. Then this back and forth just became normal somehow and I tried to remain there for her through it all. To not get upset when she would throw me away. To not block her but just to wait for her to get over being mad.

She told me that she wanted to be a housewife like she sees on TV. Her favorite thing to watch is “90 Days Fiancee”. She said she did not want to work, just stay at home and be cared for. I accepted it and mostly did not have a problem with this. I still made several attempts to arrange for us to be together, but every time I did that, she would refuse. Making up some sort of excuse for why it couldn’t happen. I grew tired of it and stopped communicating with her for a while.

After the war began, I reached out to her to check if she was okay. At this time she was in Spain and she was not in a stable situation. We talked a lot and she frequently requested money, clothing, tickets, food, etc. but I resisted. Being slightly wary from our previous interactions. I now wish that I had stuck with my gut feeling that she only wanted money and not allowed her to take control of my heart.

In the next post we will explore that trip to Spain and the events that followed.

XOXO B Poster