Asiame.com

There MAY be authentic communication and successful, honest matchmaking on the site. But you are more likely to lasso a unicorn on Telegraph Avenue. (Don't laugh, it COULD happen.) The site is set up to promote fraud and the domestic participants take full advantage of this. It in fact is comical how baldfaced the embrace of deceit truly is.

On the index page, viewers are treated to a testimonial from a male registrant named "Roy" (purportedly). The testimonial is accompanied by a photo featuring a sandy-haired young man who looks to be a happy, satisfied North American client in the arms of a fetching, lithe young Asian beauty. But if one looks at the text of Roy's testimonial, it becomes clear that Roy learned his English in Macao or Shenzhen, not Des Moines. It is pure "Chinglish" and firmly in the same linguistic pattern that all the "admirer" letters are written in.

The structure of the business divides corporate operations of Qpid's headquarters in HK from the supposed regional or "local" agencies that supposedly manage registration of individual "ladies" and the trafficking of messages and translations between the "ladies" and Qpid's suckers--er, customers: foreign, mostly non-Chinese males who pay exorbitant fees to exchange messages with the "ladies." Nearly all of these ladies are purely fictional, pretty models for whom "profiles" are invented by boiler room drudges who have some English skills that answer to this purpose.

Interestingly, actual messages are identified as originating from ONE agency, the "Guangdong Agency" no matter where the "lady" lives, even Beijing, 2000 km away (and of sufficient size to support its own local "agency"). This is transparent fraud, and as breathtakingly obvious as it is delightfully inept and amusing. Qpid doesn't even make the slight effort it would take to disguise this fraud. It's likely that these sites are all run by racketeers who have given up actual human trafficking in favor of this fraud that not only entails less risk, but reaps far greater profits. And why would ROC or HK authorities trouble themselves to police a fraud operation that bilks only foreign nationals and simply adds to the local economy?

It's as good as IP piracy with none of the heat from foreign corporations and governments. Qpid offers amusing entertainment, but woe betide the poor suckers who take it seriously and hope to find their own private Suzie Wong there.