Rozhentsova Elena from Yoshkar Ola / Moscow, Russia

Her name is Elena Rozhentsova. She is 35 years old. Her birthday is September 5, 1968. I found Elena on the Sweetheart Agency website (located in Yoshkar-Ola, Russia) in September of 2000. (I want to note that the Agency had nothing to do with this scam.) We corresponded for several months, and In February of 2001 I went to Yoshkar-Ola to meet her. I also visited her in July and December of 2001. She seemed like a very nice woman and I fell in love with her. In November of 2001 I applied for a K-1 visa for her and her son Pavel. They came to America in August of 2002. During the time they were here, I was experiencing some legal problems and employment problems. I told her that I thought it was best for them to return to Yoshkar-Ola, and I would bring them back when my problems were solved. They returned to Yoshkar-Ola in November of 2002.

After Elena and her son returned to Yoshkar-Ola, I sent them money every month (an average of $300) to support them. They lived in an apartment with her brother. Her parents lived in a house in the country. We talked on the telephone every day. She told me that she got a job as a psychologist, but she did not like it because her boss kept asking her for sex and she refused him. I kept telling her to quit her job, and she quit in early July of 2003.

In early July of 2003, I told Elena that my problems were solved. I told her that I was coming to see her in September and to do the K-1 visa again. She was very excited.

One day in mid July 2003 I called her at her apartment and a strange man answered the telephone. When Elena got on the telephone, I asked her who the man was. She said that it was her father’s brother, her uncle. Her father agreed to let him stay in the apartment for a few weeks. She said that he was a criminal and she did not like him staying there. A lot of times when I called Elena, her uncle would answer and hand her the telephone. I thought nothing of it.

I arrived in Yoshkar-Ola on September 10, 2003. Elena met me at the train station. She seemed a little nervous. She said that she had arranged for an apartment for us to rent. I thought that this was strange, because before I left on the trip she said we would be staying in her apartment. She said that her uncle was still in her apartment, and that it would be too crowded. We took a taxi to the landlord’s business, but he was not there. So Elena and I went to her friend Ludmila’s house. After an hour, Elena said that she was going to a doctor because she was sick. She said that she would return in an hour.

Three hours passed and Elena did not return. Ludmila called her at her apartment and talked to her, and then I talked to her. She told me that she had a big problem, and that she would come to see me in the evening and tell me about it. She came to Ludmila’s apartment about 7:00 pm that evening. She came in and a man of about 45 years walked in with her. Elena came into the living room with me, and the man went into the kitchen with Ludmila. I asked Elena who the man was. She told me it was her uncle. Elena then told me that we had to end our relationship. She said that I had made the decision to send her back to Russia. She said that her parents hated me and that I was not to come to her apartment. Then she and her uncle left. I was devastated. Ludmila was nice enough to let me sleep in her living room, as I had no place to stay.

The next morning Elena called me at Ludmila’s apartment. She told me that she loved me very much and that her uncle did not want her to be with me, and that is why she told me all of those bad things the night before. She said that she would come for me in the afternoon and we would go to the apartment she rented. She never came.

That evening I was walking down the street near the park with Ludmila and her son. In the distance I saw Elena walking towards us with her uncle. They were holding hands. As we approached each other, Elena saw me. Her eyes got big and she let go of her uncle’s hand. She then smiled at me, but I just ignored her.

The following day, Friday, Elena called me in the morning. I asked her why she was holding her uncle’s hand when I saw them walking together. She said that she and her uncle both saw me from a distance, and he grabbed her hand and told her not to stop and talk to me. She told me that she loved me very much and would come see me that day. She never came.

I had tried calling Elena at her apartment throughout my stay. Her uncle would answer the telephone and hang up on me every time.

I left Yoshkar-Ola the next day with a broken heart. I left the K-1 visa papers with Elena’s friend so that she could give them to Elena.

When I returned to the US, I called Elena. She was very excited and sounded like the Elena that I knew. She said that her uncle went to Moscow for a business trip. She had filled out the K-1 Visa papers and had sent them to me. She said that she wanted to come to the US and marry me. I received the papers from her and submitted them to the BCIS in late September.

I could rarely talk to Elena on the telephone. If I called her and her uncle answered, he hung up on me. If Elena answered and her uncle was there, she would start talking in Russian and hang up. I was going crazy.

I contacted the Sweetheart Agency and asked the owners to speak to Elena and find out what was going on. They said that they had not had any contact with Elena in almost a year. They talked to her, and she admitted to them that the man in her apartment was not her uncle, it was her boyfriend. He was a criminal from Moscow. In June she met him on a train from Kazan to Yoshkar-Ola. He told her that he was in the Russian Duma and his name was Anatoley. He said that he was going to Yoshkar-Ola for business. Elena told him that she was unhappy with her job. He told her that if she would rent him a room in her apartment for two weeks, then he would help her get a job in Moscow for a good salary. Elena said that she agreed to this arrangement, because she thought that I was not going to bring her back to the U.S. She said that every day he became meaner and more possessive of her. He would not let her talk on the telephone to anybody, she could not see her friends, and she could not go out of the apartment without him going with her. Her family tried to get Anatoley to leave, but he told her he was in the Mafia and that if he had to leave then he would have the Mafia take their apartment away. She said that the whole family was afraid of him. She said he had a gun.

Finally in October her father had had enough of Anatoley. He told him to leave, and Anatoley finally left their apartment for good on November 2.

Both Elena and I were very happy that Anatoley had left. She told me there was nothing between them; he was only a renter of a room in her apartment and not a boyfriend or lover. I told her that her translated letter from the Sweetheart Agency said that Anatoley was her boyfriend. She told me that she never told them that and that they had made a mistake in the translation.

I made arrangements to go and see Elena in December for the Christmas and New Years holidays. I arrived on December 19, 2003. We had a very good time while I was there. I talked to her parents; I told them why Elena and her son came back to Yoshkar-Ola in 2002. I told them that now my problems were solved and we wanted to marry. They consented and hugged and kissed us both. We had a big engagement party at a local restaurant with her family and friends. I gave Elena a beautiful $3000 diamond engagement ring. I also brought her my old laptop computer and a $300 computer program to help her improve her English.

One evening Elena wrote a letter to her friend Oksana in the U.S. She asked me to email it to her. I asked her what she wrote, and she said she told Oksana that I was there for the holidays, I had applied for a fiancée visa again for her and that she was coming to the U.S. to marry me. I sent the email to Oksana.

I left Yoshkar-Ola on January 6, 2004. I gave Elena $300 and a bank debit card to access an account I had opened, rather than me sending money by Western Union for her expenses to go to the visa interview in Moscow. I told her to tell me each time before she needed to withdraw any money so that I could make sure there was money in the account. She said that she would do this. It was emotional for me at the train station in Yoshkar-Ola when I left, but it did not seem too difficult for Elena. When I arrived in New York on January 7, 2004, I called Elena. Her mother, who only speaks Russian, said she was not there. It was 11:30 pm Yoshkar-Ola time. I called her when I arrived home. It was 7:30 am the next morning in Yoshkar-Ola. Her mother said that she was not there. I did not speak to Elena until January 12, 2004. She said that she and her son took the overnight bus to Moscow to meet me at the train station to surprise me. She said that the bus was late and they missed me. She said they went to her aunt’s house in Moscow, her son got sick, and they just arrived home on that morning.

On January 15, 2004 I called Elena. Her son said that she was not home. Then I received an email from her through the Sweetheart Agency. She said that her aunt, who lived in a village outside of Yoshkar-Ola, was sick and she was going to care for her. She said she did not know when she would return. Then she said that after I left her parents and son were arguing with her. She said that all three of them said that they did not want her and her son to come to the U.S. and marry me. This did not make sense to me. Then she said that she wanted to move out and rent an apartment when she returned from her aunt’s house until she got her visa.

I had an electronic file of the letter that Elena had written to Oksana, so I decided to use one of those free Internet translation sites and translate it into English. I was amazed at what I read. It said “Bob is here for the holidays. He has applied for the fiancée visa again for me, and I have agreed to go marry him. But I am not sure that I want to. I will solve this later.” After this I had two Russians translate her letter, and they both had the same translation as the Internet Site.

The next day I looked on the Internet and checked the bank account I had set up. Elena had withdrawn $300 on January 15, 2004 (the day she left for her aunt’s house) with the debit card. I thought that this was strange, because I had just given her $300 about a week earlier. Every day I called Elena’s apartment and talked to her son. I asked him if he wanted to come to the U.S to live, and he said yes. Every day he told me he had not heard from his mother and did not know when she would return. On January 23, 2004 I talked to him and he told me that she had called and said she would return on January 26, 2004. I called Elena’s apartment several times on January 26. Her son said that she had not returned. I checked the bank account on the Internet. Elena had made two withdrawals from the checking account that day, one for $300 and one for $70. The account balance was near zero. Then I checked the savings account that was linked to the checking account. Elena had made a withdrawal of $300 from that account. She tried twice to make another withdrawal, but it was refused because there was a limit on the number of transactions in a day. So in 10 days she had withdrawn $970 from the two accounts. This was on top of the $300 in cash that I had given her.

I called Elena’s apartment again and her son answered. I asked to speak to Elena. He said, “Hello Bob. We are going to a new city. Bye-Bye!” Then he hung up on me.

On the afternoon of January 26, 2004 I received an email from Elena through the Sweetheart Agency. She told me that she had arrived home and got into an argument with her mother. Then she said that she was walking to the store and was talking to a friend on the street. He told her to be careful, because her telephone was being tapped. Then he proceeded to tell her details of phone conversations that we had. She said that because of the situation with her parents and being told that her phone was tapped, she decided that she and her son would move to another apartment. She said that she withdrew money from the bank account to pay for the apartment rent (It is my understanding that a decent apartment in Yoshkar-Ola can be rented for $80 - $100 a month, so she now had withdrawn about a year’s worth of rent). She said that she doubted if she and her son would come to the U.S. because her son said he did not want to come. She said that she would have to think about it.

On January 28, 2004 at 1:00 am my time, I received a telephone call from Elena. She said that she and her son were in Moscow, and would be staying with her aunt for three or four days in order to get away from her parents. She said that if she did not see her parents for two or three weeks, then maybe things would be better between them. She said she did not know where they were going to live or what they were going to do. I asked her if she was still coming to the U.S. to marry me, and she said yes. She told me that she loved me. Then she told me that the bank in Yoshkar-Ola (Guta Bank) had the debit card, and that they were sending it to my bank in the U.S. What this told me was that January 27 before they took the train to Moscow, Elena must have gone to the bank again to withdraw more money. But since I had but a block on the debit card, the ATM machine confiscated it. She must have gone into the bank to see what had happened, and they told her they were sending the card back to my bank. She was calling from a telephone station, and the phone went dead because she ran out of minutes.

The owners of the Sweetheart Agency have been trying to locate and talk to Elena, but they have been unsuccessful. Both they and I have talked to Elena’s brother, Oleg. He is very close with Elena. But he tells us that he has no idea where Elena and her son are and they have not had any contact with him or his parents since they left Yoshkar-Ola on January 27, 2004.

Elena’s brother Oleg says that Elena and her son are now living in a different city. But the family doesn’t know what city, because they have not heard from Elena since she left Yoshkar-Ola on January 27, 2004 (or so they say). I have not heard from Elena since January 28, 2004. So now Elena has $1200 in cash, a $3000 diamond ring, a laptop computer that I loaned her until she came here to the U.S., and a $300 computer program for English. It is my opinion that she took that large amount of money so that she does not have to work and it will tide her over until she can find her next man. Also, she will probably sell the ring.

On February 19, 2004, I did a search of the Internet on “Elena Yoshkar-Ola.” Two photos of Elena appeared in the results from AnastasiaWeb Agency. Her member number was 43797, and it said her membership was canceled. However, it did say that her age was 34. When Elena returned to Yoshkar-Ola from the U.S., she was 34. So after she returned home, she put her profile on the Internet, looking for another man. At the same time she told me that she had no interest in looking for another man, that she loved me and wanted to marry me.

On March 5, 2004, I had my friend’s wife, Olga (she is from the Ukraine), call Elena’s apartment. Olga talked to Elena’s father. Her father said that in January, Anatoley came to the apartment and took Elena and her son Pavlik. He told her father that he did not like him, and that he was taking Elena and Pavlik to live with him. He said that Elena’s family would never see them again. Her father said that Elena telephoned him one time since she left, and that she told him that she and her son were OK and not to worry about them. I remember that Elena had told me previously that this man Anatoley lived in Moscow.

Elena’s address in Yoshkar-Ola is:

8 Petrova Street Apartment 21

Telephone: 21 64 25

Russian International Passport: 60 N^o 1292958

Russian Domestic Passport: 88 01 140443

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Robert J. Wolfgang

Email: wolfgangrj@aol.com

reports: #1; #2

support this black list

return to black list of individual scammers