Internet love is a dangerous game, why Britons can't laugh any more, an update on the demon dentist, and the coach with more 'balls' than most...

Hardcore teddy banned from Zurich bear parade

Reuters

Dateline: Zurich,cs - A giant dominatrix teddy bear wearing a leather mask and brandishing hand-cuffs has been banned from sober Zurich's street display of man-sized model bears, the project's artistic director said on Tuesday.



While tourists pose for snaps next to a brightly-painted and benign array of models such as the "schoolteacher bear" and the "skier bear", "Baervers" -- a pun on the German for perverse -- has been deemed too steamy for the financial capital's streets.

"This bear is perverse, dominatrix and hardcore. We had to ban it because of the children," Beat Seeberger-Quin, the project's art director, told Reuters.

The offending bear, which sports bright red lipstick, a corset and thigh-length leather boots, stands atop a pedestal bearing the words "first class service".

Some 600 teddies, variously decorated by artists, stud the streets of Zurich and its airport in the "Teddy-Summer" project.

The controversial model had been allocated a place near Zurich's Paradeplatz, home to Switzerland's top banks such as Credit Suisse and UBS, before Seeberger-Quin spotted the final design and decided to ban it.

The dominatrix bear's creators now seek a private home for their sadomasochist teddy. At least "Baervers" will not face the same hazards as his publicly-displayed peers, some of which have been vandalised or even kidnapped.

"Two or three of the bears have been splashed with paint, and one bear -- a nice small bear wearing a little dress -- has been stolen," Seeberger-Quin said. (:/)

I'd love that for my street, to hang outside the library.

Britain suffers sense of humour failure due to worries of modern life

AFP

Dateline: London - Britain is suffering a sense of humour failure, with laughter levels three times lower now than 50 years ago and nearly half of all adults unable to enjoy at least one big guffaw a day, research showed.

Money worries, relationship woes and even political concerns were among the reasons given for the collection of grim faces, according to the data, collected for the cruise company Ocean Village.

"Laughter is an essential ingredient of a healthy, happy life and is one of the most effective and immediate antidotes to stress and tension -- it really is the best medicine," said Amanda Bate from Ocean Village.

"The findings of this study show a worrying trend towards glumness. In the 1950s we laughed for an average of 18 minutes daily but this has dropped to just six minutes per day," she said.

Morning misery is rife, with almost half of Britons -- some 45 percent -- admitting they frequently wallowed in gloom until lunchtime.

Around 16 million adults, totalling 40 percent, said they failed to muster even one proper belly laugh in an average day.

It is not all sulking and moodiness, however, as the research found that single women aged 18 to 24 in the northern city of Manchester were the happiest people in the country.

In addition, Bristol, in western England, was named the most cheerful place for couples aged 25 to 34.

Factors such as weather, time of day and age, were all cited as being able to spark the blues.

July and August were the happiest months of the year according to three out of four people quizzed, with January the most miserable.

The study was carried out by ICM Research on behalf of Ocean Village who interviewed a random selection of 1,000 adults aged 18 or over. (:/)

I just don't find that funny, you know?

Store Clerk Gets Own Stolen Check

KTHV

Job Applicant Can't Wait to Steal From Work

Ashley Oglesby was only on her second day of work at a Malvern, Ark., tobacco store when another woman tried to pay with a check — from the checkbook of Ashley Oglesby.

"I waited on her, I rang it up on the register and she hands me the check," Oglesby told KTHV-TV of Little Rock. "And I went, 'Oh my God, this is mine.'"

Oglesby, working the store's drive-through window, warned the alleged check-forger not to leave the premises.

"I turned around and I told her, "I have your driver's license and your license plate number, and you better not leave,'" she told the TV station.

Police arrested Rachael Pitts of Malvern, who they said had a history of forgery.

"The girl that stole [the checks], she got them from another girl that was a roommate with me," said Oglesby. "And they pilfered through my stuff and stole them. I didn't even know they were stolen."

Pitts had even been sentenced earlier this year to two years in prison for check forgery, but police said she might have been released due to overcrowding.

Oglesby, however, is glad that someone else is no longer using her checkbook.

"You win some and you lose some," she said with regard to Pitts, "[and] you get what you deserve." (:/)

Alcohol, Cigarettes and Fast Cars Don't Mix

AP

Dateline: Foreman, Ark.— A leap of faith proved hazardous for a smoker in need of a cigarette fix after a night on the town.

Jeff Foran suffered trauma to his nose, eyes and chin after jumping from a car traveling 55-60 mph. Authorities said he was trying to retrieve a cigarette blown out of the passenger-side window.

Foran, 38, took the leap Saturday night, state police Trooper Jamie Gravier said.

The driver of the car, Jerry Glenn Nelson, said Foran had asked him earlier in the evening to be a designated driver after a night of drinking.

"Foran did the right thing and asked his buddy to drive him home," Gravier said. "It was obvious he was extremely intoxicated."

Gravier added: "If anything could make him stop smoking, this should be it. The man is lucky to be alive." (:/)

Scandinavia in the news

Breaking, Entering and Leasing Out

(lost)

Oslo, Norway — An enterprising if unscrupulous Norwegian found a way to turn a tidy profit on Oslo real estate by renting out a nice apartment in a popular part of town.

What the renters didn't know was that he had broken in to someone else's apartment and then rented it out to 11 different people, the national news media reported Tuesday.

Police said the 29-year-old, whose name was withheld, admitted breaking in to the apartment, and posting photographs of it on an Internet real estate site, asking for a bargain $780 a month in rent.

Since such an apartment normally costs 35 percent more in Oslo, about 60 hopefuls flocked to the con man's showing.

Eleven were so eager that they each paid a $2,340 deposit, for a total of $25,780 transferred to the swindler's bank account.

Ingrid Christensen, of the Oslo police, told Norway's largest newspaper, Verdens Gang, the money was found in the suspect's bank account and he would face fraud charges.

The real renter was traveling at the time of the showings, and has now changed all the locks. (:/)

Finns hoard toilet paper amid industry row

(lost)

Dateline: Helsinki - Shoppers in Finland raided shelves for toilet paper on Wednesday in fear of it running out as a lockout of workers kept the Nordic country's paper mills shut.

"As soon as we get a delivery, the packages vanish off the shelves. The big bags go first," said Hille Laine, manager of a central Helsinki shop which had no tissue paper products left.

Paper makers enforced a four-week lockout on May 18 following a two-day strike by workers. The dispute in the key export sector is mainly over industry's plans to scrap mill shutdowns during some holidays and on the use of outside labour.

The latest round of talks between workers and employers ended without a deal on Wednesday, meaning that the lockout will continue at least until Monday when they are due meet again. (:/)

And now for one of my favourite types of story:

Scissors found in Iranian woman
-- six years after caesarean

AFP

Dateline: Tehran - A pair of scissors and four needles have been recovered from inside the belly of an Iranian woman six years after she gave birth by caesarean section, the Iran newspaper reported.

The report said the unnamed woman from the western town of Marivan in Kurdistan province had complained of chronic abdominal pains -- prompting the discovery of leftover tools in her tummy.

The doctor who performed the caesarean is now facing legal action, the paper said Tuesday. (:/)

Argh!

Smooth-Talking Escaped Con Finally Caught

AP

Dateline: Stuart, Fla.— A prisoner who escaped from a work crew two weeks ago and was driven away by a woman who didn't know he was a fugitive was caught after he tried to shoplift from a department store.

William Hawley, 42, had been on the run since May 10, when he escaped from a Martin Correctional Institution (search) work crew and ditched his prison clothing. He told a woman that his wife or girlfriend was ready to deliver their baby, his car had broken down and he needed a cab.

As earlier described in Out There, Charlotte Yoder took Hawley to five medical centers in two counties. She was not harmed and didn't find out he was a fugitive until she returned home to worried relatives and detectives.

Hawley, a career burglar and car thief, was arrested Monday after a security guard at a Sears in Daytona Beach caught him trying to leave the store with a $15.99 pry bar inside a gym bag, The Stuart News reported.

Hawley also had a glass pipe with suspected cocaine residue, a police report said.

He gave authorities a fake name, but a fingerprint check at revealed his true identity.

Hawley was charged with retail theft and possession of cocaine and drug paraphernalia. He was also expected to face escape and other charges. (:/)

Odd laws ban owning skunks and swearing

Reuters

Dateline: Washington - In Virginia, under the terms of a 1950 law, no animal may be hunted on Sundays except raccoons, which may be hunted until 2:00 a.m.

In Connecticut, a 1949 ordinance forbids the storing of town records in any place where liquor is sold.

A 1974 Tennessee law states: "It is unlawful for any person to import, possess, or cause to be imported into this state any type of live skunk."

The legal codes of U.S. states, counties and cities are replete with archaic, sometimes nonsensical and often humorous laws, many of which were passed decades or even centuries ago for a reason that seemed good at the time but has long since been forgotten or faded into irrelevance.

But these old laws occasionally come back to bite.

Sheriff Carson Smith of Pender County, North Carolina, recently relied on a 1805 law banning the cohabitation of unmarried persons to give one of his employees an ultimatum.

He told Deborah Hobbs she could either marry her boyfriend, move out of the house they were living in together or get fired. Hobbs, 40, quit and went to the American Civil Liberties Union, which launched a legal challenge to the law.

"This is not a dead-letter law in North Carolina. We have found this statute has been used 36 times since 1997 to charge people with a crime. At least seven have been convicted," said Jennifer Rudinger, the ACLU's North Carolina director.

It turns out six other states also have anti-cohabitation laws: Virginia, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Mississippi and North Dakota. Four other states -- Illinois, Minnesota, South Carolina and Utah -- have laws against fornication, defined as unmarried sex, according to Dorian Solot of the Alternatives to Marriage Project, a group based in Albany, New York which advocates for equality and fairness for unmarried people.

"The good news is most of these laws are not enforced, as far as we know," said Solot. "They occasionally come up when a prosecutor is already looking into an individual and may decide to throw another charge at them."

The ACLU argues all these statutes are unconstitutional, citing a 2003 Supreme Court decision striking down a Texas anti-sodomy law, which established a broad constitutional right to sexual privacy.

In Washington state, Gov. Christine Gregoire signed a law last month allowing pregnant women to divorce their husbands. It was prompted by the case of Shawnna Hughes who was denied the right to divorce her physically abusive husband by Superior Court Judge Paul Bastine because she was pregnant.

"There's a lot of case law that says it is important in this state that children not be illegitimized," the judge said at the time.

Most states still have anti-swearing laws on their books which police occasionally try to enforce. Judges usually throw them out but citizens sometimes get fined or spend a few hours in a local jail.

In one Michigan case, a man who let loose a stream of curses after falling out of a canoe in 1999 was convicted of violating a law against cursing in front of women and children. He was fined $75 (40.90 pounds) and ordered to perform four days of community service. In 2002, an appeals court struck down the 1898 law and threw out the conviction.

According to the site, in Minnesota a person may not cross state lines with a duck atop his head. In North Carolina, it is illegal to sing off key. In Idaho, you may not fish on a camel's back while Ohio makes it unlawful to get a fish drunk or to fish for a whale on Sundays. (:/)

I just loved the fact that you can't have a good, clean swear if you fall in the water! That's so unfair.

Suicide hotline to open only from 9 to 5

Reuters

Dateline: Toronto - A Canadian province will shut its 24-hour suicide hotline and replace it with one that operates only during business hours.

Prince Edward Island, a small province on Canada's East Coast, says it is too expensive to operate the hotline around the clock. Starting June 1, it will be open only between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m., Monday through Friday.

The plan drew protest from mental health groups across the country on Wednesday.

"How many times, when you get upset or worried or concerned about things, is it in the middle of the day? It's usually at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning when you wake up," said Joan Wright, executive director of the Canadian Association for Suicide Prevention based in Edmonton, Alberta.

The hotline received about 1,400 calls a year and about 50 were from people contemplating suicide, health groups said.

"One of the things I was hearing is the government felt there weren't enough suicide-related calls," Wright said.

Prince Edward Island, Canada's smallest province with a population of about 137,000 people, is trying to tame its budget deficit. The hotline cost about C$30,000 (12,965 pounds) a year to run.

"It's a very small amount of money in our view," said Reid Burke, executive director of the Canadian Mental Health Association.

"(Given) the economic cost of a suicide, if governments pay attention to dollars and numbers, not what happens to people, it just doesn't make sense." (:/)

Now, a few of you may recall the story about the dentist who was accused of... well... inappropriately combining business with pleasure...

Ex-Dentist Gets Probation in Semen Case

AP

Dateline: Charlotte, N.C. - A former dentist accused of using syringes to squirt his semen into the mouths of female patients was sentenced to probation on seven assault charges Wednesday though he refused to say he was guilty.

John Hall entered the Alford plea — under which a defendant acknowledges there is enough evidence for a conviction without admitting wrongdoing — at a hearing before Superior Court Judge Robert Ervin. He was charged with seven counts of misdemeanor assault on a female.

Ervin placed Hall, 44, on probation for five years, telling the alleged victims he chose that over a maximum 120-day prison sentence in the hope that Hall's activities would be monitored and similar acts prevented.

"I don't feel I can do justice," Ervin told the women who attended Wednesday's court hearing.

Under the probation sentence, Hall is to spend three months on house arrest and perform 120 hours of community service.

Hall, who practiced in nearby Cornelius, was charged with assaulting six patients, including one of them twice, over an eight-month period in 2003.

The state Board of Dental Examiners revoked Hall's license in August after the six former patients said he made them swallow what they now believe was his semen.

In testimony before the board, Hall denied the allegations.

"I have never injected semen in any patient's mouth," he said. "I never would. I've got a 10-year-old daughter. That whole concept is so beyond me."

Police searched Hall's office and confiscated syringes after several employees said they were suspicious of the dentist's behavior. DNA tests on the syringes later showed they contained Hall's semen. (:/)

Ick.

Square-eyed addicts are first casualties of game console wars

AFP

Dateline: Washington - A neglected baby cries alone. Crazed by lack of sleep, a young boy threatens suicide. A marriage crumbles over a lone obsession.

Yet another grim tale of 21st Century social breakdown? No, these are the victims of America's newest social scourge ... video game addiction.

As Sony and Microsoft ready new generation weapons, the PlayStation 3 and
XBox consoles for a pitched battle next year, hundreds of thousands of children and young adults are struggling to contain their obsession with older machines.

Psychologists and psychiatrists estimate that even before the new wave of gaming consoles hits the stores, one in eight players already suffers from some kind of video game dependency.

There are few long-term scientific studies on video game addiction.

But the reach of the video obsession is borne out by the popularity of one online game "Halo 2." By early 2005, one million players, had staggeringly clocked up nearly 100 million hours on the game, according to industry figures.

> now, i'm no game nut, but i can point the finger at at least three people on this mailing list who can claim considerably more hours on certain games - and on games in toto, a number staggeringly higher. (:/)

Now, there are without doubt people on this list who would laugh in derision at people who spend so little time playing games...

Next, is this one of the luckiest escapes of all time (barring the bloke who fell from a plane into the only tree in miles)?

ATV Careens Off Bridge

Ohio Advocate

Dateline: Newark -- A Newark man is lucky to be alive, officials say, after crashing his four-wheeler into Raccoon Creek off a 40-foot bridge to avoid an oncoming train.

Kenneth Gainor, 27, drove over the side of the Ohio Central Railroad System bridge near the intersection of Wilson and Raccoon streets at about 1:30 p.m. Tuesday.


Photos by Kevin Graff, The Advocate

"Obviously, with the potential here -- falling into literally inches of water, the four-wheeler could have crushed him or he could have landed on his head. He's truly fortunate to be conscious, alert and talking to us," Newark Fire Chief Jack Stickradt said.

According to Jeffrey Layman, an investigator for Ohio Central, Gainor had been chased away from the nearby rail yard and drove off along the tracks on his four-wheeler.

"We battle those kids down there all the time," he said.

A train was coming from the other direction as Gainor rode along the tracks, at which point he decided to turn off the bridge into the creek, Layman said.

Newark police officer Ray Hopkins said charges will be filed against Gainor for criminal trespassing on the railroad's property.

While Gainor was not critically injured, given the height of the fall and the shallow water, it could have been much worse, which is a serious concern for Layman.

"You just can't warn them enough to stay away," he said.

As rescue divers entered the water to retrieve him, Gainor groaned and grimaced Tuesday. He was noticeably in pain, but still able to move around and communicate with medics.

The underside of his overturned four-wheeler served as a gurney while rescuers placed him on a backboard and stabilized his neck as a precaution.

Stickradt said Gainor suffered fractures to his lower legs and possibly a spinal injury, although none of the injuries was life-threatening.

"That was definitely not your run-of-the-mill four-wheeler drive," he said.

Plastic Surgery Mum: My Ear Fell Off

The Mirror

STUNNED Tania Shirt's ear fell off as she dried her hair following surgery to stop them sticking out.

Skin around the left ear had died and gone black because dressings around it were too tight, cutting off blood flow.

It worked lose and came off as Tania, 34, got ready for a New Year's night out two months after the operation.

"I was at home on my own when it happened and didn't know if the doctors could do anything for me. I thought it would be like that for the rest of my life," said the divorced mum-of-two. Care assistant Tania had always hated her ears, wearing her hair long and avoiding swimming.

"If my hair got wet I'd burst into floods of tears," she said.

She had surgery after her mum, whose ears also protruded, underwent a successful op. After her ear fell off Tania had plastic surgery. A new ear was carved out of cartilage from her rib. As it is her tissue, the body cannot reject it.

The ear will lie flat against her head in a pocket of skin until blood flow re-establishes. Her new look will be completed with further surgery later this year.

Tania, of Barnsley, South Yorks - compensated for the surgery in 2000 that went wrong - said: "Obviously I haven't enjoyed losing my ear or the pain, but it's been a fascinating and educational experience." (:/)

Sport

Soccer fans forced to watch women in bikinis

SAPA/Auckland News, I think

Dateline: Wellington, New Zealand - Enraged football fans took to the streets of Auckland at four on Sunday morning, looking for a bar showing the English FA Cup's outcome after the local Sky TV channel switched over to another programme at full time.

With Arsenal and Manchester United in a scoreless tie after the regulation 90 minutes of play, Sky Sport went to its next scheduled programme, "Sports Illustrated 2005 Swimwear at Play", the New Zealand Herald reported on Monday.

Fans left watching a parade of bikini-clad women missed 30 minutes of extra time and the first penalty shootout in the cup's 134-year history.

About 150 to 200 people at Auckland's Albion Hotel who described themselves as "gutted" when the coverage ended took to the streets of New Zealand's largest city in search of another bar showing the game, manager Paul Hafford told the paper.

Sky Digital customers found the continued coverage on another sports channel, but subscribers to the cheaper UHF service missed out.

"Obviously, there was a problem, and the UHF coverage finished before the end of the game. Why that happened I don't know," Sky's director of sports, Kevin Cameron, said after fans bombarded the channel with protests. (:/)

Gulliver Prep coach Lazer Collazo resigns

Miami Herald

Gulliver Prep baseball coach Lazer Callazo officialy resigned Wednesday, a week after his alledged involvement of improper behavior towards his players came to light.

''I am doing it for the kids and I am doing it for the school,'' Callazo told the Herald Wednesday morning. ``I am not going to coach anymore at the high school or college level. I am going to stay and work at my Hardball Academy and that's all I have to say.''

School officials said Tuesday Callazo had agreed to resign as coach at the beginning of June.

''This is a resignation he is fully aware of,'' Gulliver public relations director Jen Vaida said Tuesday.

According to a Coral Gables police report, Collazo dropped his pants, took out his penis and accused his players of not having the testicular fortitude it takes to play baseball after a loss to Florida Christian on April 7.

''He then,'' according to a Coral Gables police report, ''pointed to his penis, testicles and asked the team if they had a set of these or were they equipped with a vagina.''

Collazo, who led Gulliver to the Class 3A state championship last season, did not comment on the allegations. (:/)

Sci-tech

Vanity Plate Spells Out 'Speed'

AP

Dateline: Seattle — Most drivers may be puzzled by the vanity license plate "C9H13N," but chemically-savvy crooks may nod their heads knowingly.

It's the chemical formula for amphetamine, and despite a state law that prohibits references to alcohol or illegal substances on vanity plates, it may be perfectly legal.

Bradley A. Benfield, a spokesman for the state Licensing Department, said such a license has been granted to the owner of a black 2002 Audi registered in Seattle.

The plate may be legal because amphetamine, like its close chemical cousin, the street drug methamphetamine (chemical formula C10H15N), is a legal substance when used in medicine.

"This is a serious concern if there is a license out there with something on it that a reasonable person would consider related to an illegal substance," said Benfield. "It's pretty easy for something like this to slip through."

To revoke the plate, state officials would have to notify the owner by letter and refer the issue to a committee, consisting of representatives from the Licensing Department, Washington State Patrol, county auditors and vehicle-licensing agents.

Out of 6.5 million vehicles registered in the state, about 83,000 have vanity plates. Last week, officials dismissed a complaint about one reading "JOHN316," a reference to a New Testament verse, deeming it inoffensive. (:/)

Headline of the week

Well, last week...

Woman killed every six hours
(The Guardian)

... which just made me think "And she's getting really pissed off with it"...

This week's And finally story's a long 'un, but worth its length imho. It's a cup o' tea read - so limber up, chow down, and enjoy:

And finally

This love story may be a tall tale

The Virginian-Pilot, by Mathew Jones

Dateline: Virginia Beach — This is the love story of Irina Nikolaeva and Charles Wright.

Charles Wright holds out hope that the person he has been corresponding with via e-mail since December is the Russian woman he fell in love with and not an unfeeling scam artist out for his money.


Charles Wright holds out hope that the person he has been corresponding with via e-mail since December is the Russian woman he fell in love with and not an unfeeling scam artist out for his money. Chris Tyree/The Virginian-Pilot

Their romance bloomed via modem, through dozens of e-mails between Nikolaeva’s home in Siberia and Wright’s on Edinburgh Drive.

By mid-March, she had accepted his marriage proposal. By early May, she was set to board a train for Moscow, where she would catch a plane for New York, then on to Norfolk.

But she never made it. Now she is lying in a Moscow hospital, beaten into a coma, in desperate need of expensive medicine.

And the worst part is there’s a good chance none of the above is true.

Wright first contacted Nikolaeva in December.

She had been corresponding with a friend of his, and the two had talked of her coming to the States. But when she asked for money for the flight, Wright’s friend balked.

The friend dropped Nikolaeva and began dating someone else. Wright asked for her e-mail address so he could break the news.

The two began e-mailing, sometimes several times a day. They talked of their countries, their customs, their food. She was 27 and a florist.

Wright, 40, sent Nikolaeva a photo of his sailboat. She sent Wright a photo of herself – a brunette beauty holding a vase of roses – and another of her with her family in Belovo, a city in Siberian Russia.

“Hi mine lovely!” she began a February e-mail. “It is pleasant for me that you have dreams of me. I also dream of us.”

These words held a special sweetness for Wright. Never married, he’d been engaged three times before, the most recent ending three years earlier. The attention from Nikolaeva was intoxicating.

Wright , an unemployed welder, has been unable to work since a steel support gave way on him in April 2002. He fills his days playing guitar, going to church, pier fishing and target shooting.

“It so is good that I have met you in this mad world,” Nikolaeva wrote on Valentine’s Day. She described couples coming into her flower shop and talked of her desire to be with Wright.

Tucked into the message, Nikolaeva nailed down the specifics of a loan Wright would send for her aunt’s open-heart surgery.

Wright wired $200 to Russia without hesitation. When his dying mother needed help in the late 1990s, he quit his job as a long-haul truck driver and sold his rig to be there for her.

He’d written to Nikolaeva often about his philosophy on family, on sharing and caring for others. Helping her care for her family was the least he could do.

In March, Wright typed out a marriage proposal.

“These dreams so are good,” Nikolaeva replied. “I pray that our time has come soon and we have met and were the husband and the wife. I love you more and more and more.”

Wright told her he was “going to skip some bills and put some things together to get you to come over here.” He pawned a family ring to send her $600 for the flight to Norfolk.

In a May 5 e-mail, Nikolaeva said she was bidding goodbye to friends and family and heading for the train to Moscow for a flight the next morning.

“I love you my future husband!!!!! … Your Irina.”

The flight from New York was due in Norfolk at 7:45 p.m. Wright arrived early.

Three hours later he was still waiting, watching one last suitcase go around and around the baggage carousel. It was pink with flowers. There was a chance it was hers. Then another woman retrieved it.

“I was pretty ticked off and disappointed,” he recalled. He was also starting to be suspicious. He drove home and fired off an e-mail to Nikolaeva.

He heard nothing for eight days. Then, suddenly, there was a reply.

“Hello dear Charlie.” It was from Nikolaeva’s mother. “I do not receive letters from my girl some time. … It starts to disturb me. I hope that with her all well.”

Wright wrote that Nikolaeva had never arrived. A flurry of e-mail followed.


The photo Irina Nikolaeva sent to Charles Wright. (Courtesy Photo)

Nikolaeva’s mother eventually tracked her to a Moscow hospital. She had been beaten, and “Very expensive medicines to support her condition are necessary … What to do Charlie? … You can help us. You can lend money? We shall give them as soon as we shall pawn an apartment.”

Nikolaeva’s friend wrote next with the price tag: between $3,000 and $3,500.

This was absolutely out of the question. The flight alone nearly equalled Wright’s disability check. He was already getting food donations from his church.

And things were starting to smell fishy. But what if it were true?

“For all I know, this could be a whole big scam,” Wright said. “I’m not going to say it is, not going to say it’s not. I don’t know what to do.”

Whoever sent those e-mails, chances are good it’s not a Siberian florist in love.

Irina Nikolaeva, if that is her name – if she is a she – shares it with a former Russian figure skater and a linguistics researcher at Oxford. An online dating service features a woman of the same name and age but with a different photo.

The e-mails sent by Nikolaeva, her mother and her friend all came from the same address: gentle_flower@mail15.com. The Internet domain is owned by a Moscow marketing firm.

The Internet is thick with Russian dating sites, and a growing number of Russian anti-scam sites has risen in response. The latter feature message boards overflowing with the testimonials of conned men .

“They’ll say they need extra money to bribe somebody, they’ll need money to buy some clothes or a ticket, and they’ll milk them for everything,” said Mike Walker, a retired West Virginia State Police officer now with the Internet Crime Complaint Center.

“Greed and love. Those are the driving forces of all mankind,” he said.

Walker’s group, a partnership between the National White Collar Crime Center and the FBI, collects victims’ complaints in an effort to track down scammers.

Variations on the mail-order-bride con have been around a long time, Walker said. The Internet has simply allowed the scam to grow bigger, faster and farther-reaching.

The victim is usually familiar with Russia’s economic situation and scammers play on that. They say they’ve been robbed, that their fathers beat them, anything to garner sympathy. Financial requests follow.

“The conniving ones will start out small and work up to it,” Walker said, “making it a little more palatable to the victim.”

Police can’t do much, and Russian authorities usually won’t get involved over such small amounts.

As for Wright, Walker said, “Everyone’s had their heart broken. You know how he feels. The best thing we can do is bring him down gently and stop the bleeding.”

On Thursday afternoon, Wright turned on his laptop.

The day before, he had sent an e-mail requesting the name of Nikolaeva’s hospital and room number, her doctor and the police investigator.

The response from Nikolaeva’s friend answered none of this. She scolded him for threatening to involve the media, saying the publicity would blacken Russia’s global reputation.

Wright has heard nothing since, but he’s not budging.

“The way I look at it, I’m not financially able to help this woman until I can receive verification,” he said. “I’m an injured shipyard worker on a fixed income. I’m hardly even surviving myself.”

Still, he has researched setting up a medical trust fund for Nikolaeva in Moscow. And he has sent another e-mail to Russia, offering to put up his boat and truck to secure a loan.

For now, Wright is at a fork in the road.

In one direction, his fiancee lies near death in a hospital thousands of miles away. In the other sits a scam artist who never loved him.

“If it’s legitimate, I’ll try to do what I can so she can come over here, and hopefully we can have a happy and productive life,” he said.

“If this is a scam, boy, I ought to be lucky. The way people get divorced, I got off easy.” (:/)

Indeed. Until next time...

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