Inside the Matrix: How models, influencers and engagement quotas power the Social Discovery Group’s dating machine and global profits

Maria trusted that she had stumbled onto a second chance at love. From her home in Nicosia, Cyprus, she spent nearly two years on a dating platform exchanging photos, voice messages, letters and late-night thoughts on travel, children, art and love on the AmoLatina dating site with Dan, 45.

Dan said that he had a degree in finance and a passion for photography, and that he was a divorced Brazilian living in Argentina with a 20-year-old son. Attractive, gentle and attentive, Dan called Maria his “soulmate,” his “beautiful Greek goddess,” the “wife of my life,” promising he would never hurt her and that they would be together forever.

At 51, divorced after a court battle, raising two children, and carrying the weight of family tragedies including the suicide of a close relative and the sexual abuse suffered by another, Maria wanted to believe him. “He was never rude to me or cruel,” she said.

AmoLatina charged her for virtually every interaction. Maria paid every time she replied to a message, clicked on a photo, and opened a video.

On its landing page, AmoLatina promised a safe, verified, protected environment that would provide “lots of attention from attractive members.”

Dan wrote: “In a world where honesty seems like a hard-to-find treasure, I deeply value transparency, respect and loyalty. I’m not looking for a fleeting moment but rather a sincere love, someone to share my life with and build a future full of unforgettable moments.”

For Maria that attention came at a bitter cost: She discovered her relationship with Dan was a facade cultivated to engage her. And when she ended it, profiles, videos and images of two other models — one a gay movie actor — manipulated her twice more, one costly click at a time.

The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists discovered Maria, who lives a short walk from bakeries selling honey-soaked baklava and warm cheese pies, plus three churches and the shaded paths of Athalassa Park, after receiving a short anonymous email in October 2025. The email from a “concerned victim” spoke of a group of related dating sites where possibilities for love seem endless but the reality was often quite different.

ICIJ looked for other victims, finding others in Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom,  the United States, Australia, Brazil and scores more of both genders online — a long line of people who reported falling into similar exploitative virtual relationships that upended their lives. Many of the women said they were lured onto AmoLatina.com and related platforms by advertised promises that the sites were safe,  the users were verified and the communications were authentic. Instead, they said they were emotionally corralled into relationships with highly attractive, smooth-talking profiles, who, unlike them, were using the site free of charge and keeping the  paying users engaged. Indeed, the women were shelling out for each text, emoji and video message — with zero prospect of romance. AmoLatina is part of a phalanx of dating platforms, including Dating.com and DateMyAge.com, that are operated by SOL Networks and are part of the Social Discovery Group (SDG), which is headquartered without external signage in a nondescript office building in Silema, Malta.

Maria and one other woman discovered avowedly straight male courtiers appearing in gay films and online content; a gay woman found her love interest in straight erotica; another woman discovered the man who asked her to marry him had a wife.

The models or influencers are recruited online and in person by intermediaries — marketers, modeling agencies, fellow models, photographers, groups of friends — to create photos and videos that are used in dating profiles on multiple platforms, often simultaneously, typically mixed in with genuine profiles. These free users don’t pay and instead are required to generate engagement on the site. They use aliases and manicured bios, often recounting sad stories of lovers who cheated on them and loved ones who died. They smile, wave, blow kisses, recite syrupy verse and shape their hands into love hearts in active, well-lit prerecorded videos with no one else in the background, often using similarly scripted lines with several paying members at the same time across multiple platforms operated by SDG and its subsidiaries.

“My love, I stop here to remind you that you are the sun in my gray days, the laughter in my sad moments and the love in every bit of my heart,’’ one model, clearly reading from a script, declares in a video reviewed by ICIJ.

Each of the women interviewed by ICIJ managed to free themselves from the attention of one catfishing profile — only to be approached by another, and another.

The platforms, which stretch from Malta to Colombia, the United States to Ukraine, Australia, Hong Kong and beyond, deny paying models to pose as genuine dates or enabling predatory behavior to drive up their profits.

But they freely admit to partnering with marketing firms that find models and employ content creators, so-called chat operators who generate revenue for the sites by building and burnishing models’ profiles and translating their love notes in real time.

‘Our top four or five of all scam types’

Romance scams reached record-high losses in 2025, with Federal Trade Commission data showing over 70,000 reports and a staggering $1.47 billion lost in the U.S. — generating more losses than any other type of scam. Losses also reportedly surged in the U.K., South Korea, Australia and across Africa.

According to Supervisory Special Agent Keith Custer of the FBI’s Baltimore field office, romance scams are among the costliest for those who are targeted.  “It is in our top four or five of all scam types and the average for all complaints is about $20,000, and it is not unusual to see victims lose hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more than a million dollars,” Custer told ICIJ. “The scammers do not stop until they have bled the victims dry.”

Custer said romance scams were also among the fastest growing online crimes, with cases reported to the FBI soaring by 38% last year, an explosion partly caused by artificial intelligence.

All but one of the women that ICIJ spoke with asked to be identified by their first names only to avoid further personal distress, to protect family members and so as not to harm their employment prospects.

The women’s cumulative losses totaled in the thousands for some, in the tens of thousands of dollars for others and, for one, more than $130,000 (later the subject of a confidential settlement).

None of the women ICIJ interviewed made a genuine romantic match. When they questioned the authenticity of the men they were confiding in, they received reassurance videos from them on the platforms.

The videos were prerecorded.

The Online Dating and Discovery Association, which represents about 500 brands globally, recognizes that fraudulent users are an industry-wide problem that many sites such as Tinder and Match are actively contending with. Not all dating site companies are members of the trade group. Not all discourage live video or audio calls between users. And not all forbid exchanging contact details between users on their platforms.

But the women ICIJ spoke with were clients of inter-related platforms with these peculiar policies, and behind all of those platforms, and a global web of companies, is a wealthy and colorful Russian entrepreneur named Dmitry Borisovich Volkov.

Sex robots and the multiverse

Volkov, who turned 50 in July, controls more than 60 global dating brands, including AmoLatina, through his companies Social Discovery Group, formerly Social Discovery Ventures or SDVentures, SOL Networks Ltd., SOL Holdings Ltd. and other smaller entities which are part of the dating group, including Dil Mil, which is operated by DMM Solutions Inc., and CupidMedia. SDV continues as a Volkov investment group with stakes in blockchain developer Bitfury, AI-powered conversation agent Woebot, Patreon, Revolut and a real estate development fund, among other assets.

Born in Moscow in 1976, Volkov obtained Maltese citizenship in the past decade. He reportedly has a luxury villa in Malta’s affluent Sliema district, where many of his platforms are based, and a second address in Il-Gzira. He moves often between there and Stresa, a tourist town in northern Italy on the shores of Lake Maggiore, as well as Dubai, the French Alps, Moscow, New York, San Francisco and other international hubs. In 2019, Forbes Russia reported that he was flying to and from a Gothic castle in a remote forest setting near the medieval town of Kuldiga, Latvia, that he had purchased for $4 million.

Volkov, who started his career working as an assistant for someone who was building nightclubs in Moscow, has been involved in IT projects since the 1990s. He reportedly purchased the dating company AnastasiaDate in 2011 from an American-Russian couple, David and Elena Buseden, after his company IT-Online first automated AnastasiaDate’s profiles and photos. Volkov appeared in 10 Days=Wife:  Love Translated, a 2010 documentary about a Canadian man who travels to Ukraine but fails to find love on an AnastasiaDate tour. In 2013, a judge in Manhattan ruled against Anastasia in a defamation case, saying it had failed to show that a competitor had put out stories labeling it a scam on a site called AnastasiaDatefraud.com  which featured stories purportedly written by women who worked for Anastasia International in which they said they were paid employees hired to correspond with men and then “break their hearts”.

Volkov is a patron of contemporary art and scientific research who has shared his interest in sentient and sex robots, multiverses and interfaith and intercultural dialogue. In 2017, at a meeting described on a religious foundation website between Russian scholars and the Dalai Lama in India, Volkov asked what “the self” is and proposed uploading a person’s mind to a computer.

By connecting and verifying the women’s stories through written testimonies, record and payment reviews, job ads, social media posts,text messages and numerous international interviews in several languages, ICIJ discovered that SDG and SOL Networks have left a trail of victims in their wake.

AmoLatina’s published communication policy, a mirror image of those for other SDG sites, requires free users to sign in at least three times and spend at least eight hours online per week, reply to at least 60% of incoming emails within 72 hours and 60% of chats within 10 minutes, upload new photos regularly, and participate in video calls with other members on their “contact list” at least twice a month. Despite the policy, none of the women that ICIJ spoke with had had any live video calls.

SDG, which claims to solve the problem of loneliness with the help of virtual intimacy, told ICIJ in a statement that it does not pay models or free users and does not allow users to use “licensed likenesses or any arrangement where the person depicted in the profile is different from the person operating the account.”

“Every profile on our platforms must represent a real individual who personally uses that account,” SDG’s public relations team said, adding  “Accordingly, there is no category of ‘licensed  likeness’ profiles on our platforms, and we do not distinguish between such profiles internally because they are not permitted to exist.”

The company acknowledged hiring “third-party affiliated marketing partners” to assist it in finding people willing to become free users. These marketing partners, it said, assisted with onboarding these users, provided them with translation services, and helped them maintain accurate and up-to-date content.

SDG said its affiliate marketing partners were not permitted to communicate on behalf of, or to pay users. Free users, it said, were “prohibited” from receiving compensation from affiliated marketing partners and were banned if found to be doing so, without an option to restore their membership.

Finding Dan, 45

Divorced for eight years, Maria, a former gym owner, joined EuroDate in November 2023, then migrated to its sister site AmoLatina, where she struck up a digital conversation with Dan, 45.

Maria knew deep connection was rare, but Dan’s texts and videos seemed to embody it. Dan sent Maria soft-spoken voice messages and personalized videos using her name — smiling into the camera, addressing her directly. But never live.

Platform membership started at $9.99 per month. One credit cost 40 to 80 cents, 20 credits $15.99, and 1,000 credits $399. A basic chat cost one credit per minute, an email 10 credits, and the opening or sending of a video 15 credits.

Maria continued to buy communication credits to send and receive messages, open videos and otherwise interact with Dan on the platform day and night. “In the first few months, everything felt very real and natural,” Maria recalled. “I truly believed I was developing a real relationship. We communicated daily, there was emotional closeness, and I trusted him. He often spoke about a future together, which made the relationship feel serious and meaningful.”

Experts like Becky Holmes, author of “Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud,” compare dating fraud victims to gambling addicts. Holmes, who was once a gambling addict herself and has been a victim of dating fraud, said people in these situations prioritize hope over evidence and suppress doubts rather than face them.

I always say to people, ‘For God’s sake, don’t put online that you are a widow.’ — romance fraud expert Becky Holmes

She told ICIJ that romance scammers often tell stories involving cancer, troubled children, car crash deaths and abusive pasts as a means of bonding over trauma. To build dependency, she said, the scammers repeatedly love-bomb their victims (“you are like a princess”) and pepper them with constant “low-stakes” messaging (good mornings, hellos). “They choose to target the thing that you hold dear,” Holmes said. “I always say to people, ‘For God’s sake, don’t put online that you are a widow.’ ”

After 20 months, even Maria had to face her doubts. Messages came at odd hours. Despite nearly two years of daily communication, Dan never agreed to live video calls, stating both that a contract prevented him from communicating off-platform and that a manager ran his social media accounts.

As her unease peaked, Maria contacted AmoLatina, which offered explanations about privacy and professional constraints on Dan’s availability. AmoLatina also sent Maria a prerecorded video of Dan sitting on a bench as evidence that he was genuine. The video came with a  threat from AmoLatina that sharing it could result in legal action.

SDG said its payment structure is transparent and simple to understand: It allows affordable access for users to engage with each other and pay for its services at their own pace, at a scale of their choosing.

Exhausted by her unsustainable spending and the pattern of affection, evasion and reassurance, and having finally concluded that Dan was playing her, Maria moved on with a heavy heart.

After complaining to AmoLatina, Maria received a video from the platform “to help clarify any misunderstandings and to reassure you of his [Dan’s] genuine intentions.”

Between chats with him and the profiles of two other purported lovers, she had spent $61,141, she said.

Maria decided to find Dan, 45. Using a reverse image search, she identified him as Danilo Magni, a Brazilian model and influencer. Maria shared their exchanges with ICIJ.

Maria communicated with two other men on the site: Daniel, 41 and Ricardo D, who sent her personalized videos urging her to continue communicating while, paradoxically, avoiding live video calls.

She later identified them, too, as Brazilian models, Daniel Benjamin, an influencer, DJ , actor and model; and Leo Silva, a 2016 Mister Brasil contestant, whom the dating site labeled as verified users under their profile names. In a video sent to Maria by the platform, Leo Silva tells her from what appears to be the back seat of a taxi that Ricardo is “just a nickname” he uses on the platform.

Daniel, 41 continuously resisted live communication with Maria, citing technical difficulties.

Maria confronted Daniel Benjamin via social media in July 2025. She shared their off-platform exchanges with ICIJ. In the Instagram messages, Benjamin said his platform ID and his photos, which included many shirtless ones at home, had been stolen. Benjamin added that AI had probably been used by scammers to fake the “personal explanation.”

After Maria found Benjamin on social media, AmoLatina sent her a video of him, sitting on a train, telling her – over the sound of a Chinese rail service announcer —  that his modeling agent did not know that he was on the dating platform and that he was breaking off his communication with her.

As it turned out, Benjamin was also an actor in queer romance films — who would claim without evidence that it hadn’t been him communicating with her at all.

The three men did not respond to questions from ICIJ.  Magni’s modeling agency, First Models, said in reply to questions that it had no reason to believe that he would authorize the improper use of his image. Maria said she reported the men’s profiles to AmoLatina. She said that she received no meaningful response.

Maria later discovered AmoLatina’s published communication policy — and its frantic requirements that free users engage with paying users, thus generating revenue for SDG platforms. “These requirements read more like performance expectations than the behaviour of individuals casually looking for relationships,” she said.

Reflecting on her ordeal, Maria said she remains convinced that she was talking to Danilo Magni, but she accepts that she may also have been communicating with chat operators at other times.

SDG said that it does not employ chat operators or models, directly or indirectly, and that profiles operated by agents or third parties are strictly prohibited.

But ICIJ’s interviews, review of scores of documents, and allegations in a civil racketeering lawsuit filed in the U.S. contradict SDG’s claims minimizing the role played by these parties on its dating sites. In the lawsuit against DMM Solutions Inc., a service provider for SDG-owned sites, a former paying user, Michelle Grimmett,  from St. Louis alleged the sites use “fake profiles” to trick clients into engaging with people they think are love interests.

In fact, she alleged, DMM Solutions-operated websites “are populated by scores” of “fake ‘catfish’ profiles that are set up to use photographs of paid models with the sole goal and purpose of enticing users to buy credits to engage with them.” The suit, filed in 2024 under civil racketeering laws in U.S. federal court in New York City, was sent from the federal court to arbitration and is pending.

The Better Business Bureau,  a U.S. organization that tracks consumer complaints nationwide, told ICIJ that it had received 64 complaints, including 19 in the last year, about Dil Mil, DMM Solutions and the Social Discovery Group’s dating platforms. Consumers, it said, had complained about billing, refunds and feeling pressured to spend money on gifts and photos, as well as alleging that they had been interacting with fake profiles or bots and expressing frustration over the inability to move conversations off-platform or verify whether connections were genuine. The BBB said DMM Solutions has an F consumer rating, the lowest possible ranking.

Maria complained to the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority, claiming she had been scammed and had lost more than $60,000 on AmoLatina.

The MCCAA requested Maria’s consent to use the information and documentation she had provided, together with a sworn affidavit detailing her complaint and supporting evidence, she said. They informed her that any investigation would be administrative and regulatory in nature and would not result in compensation or personal redress for her. She is considering her options. AmoLatina offered a refund of 1,500 euros (about $1,700), which she declined.

SDG said the free users who were the subject of Maria’s complaints, Danilo Magni, Daniel Benjamin and Leo Silva, had completed the verification process but declined  to comment on specific claims about them. SDG explained that verification does not extend to a user’s occupation or guarantee that a user will agree to meet in person or participate in live video calls. Nor, it said, did verification extend to the accuracy of location or relationship intentions; the user’s character or intentions, or sincerity. It said users may use nicknames, rather than legal names.

While free users may be more visible and hold accounts across multiple SDG platforms, the company said, it did not permit profiles to use photos of others, even under licence, that are not those of the person operating the account: “It is important to re-iterate that SDG is always trying to prevent or root out the threat from fraudulent behaviour; we have developed and use industry leading verification tools that are mandatory for some users; we warn or shut down accounts that breach our terms; we fine or terminate dealings with affiliates who do not abide by our terms.”

Criminologist and forensic linguist Elisabeth Carter, an associate professor at Kingston University in London, told ICIJ that Maria’s experience was cruelly emblematic. “So you end up in a situation where you have lost the love of your life, you are grieving, and you have lost all of your money as well,” she said.

Dating sites’ use of words like “safe” and “verified” gave customers the misleading impression that they were “capable guardians” who could protect them from fraud, Carter added. “You then outsource some of your trust onto that endorsement and it means that you park your own human intuition and defer to the site,” she said.

So you end up in a situation where you have lost the love of your life, you are grieving, and you have lost all of your money as well. — associate professor Elisabeth Carter

At her lowest ebb, when her psychiatrist was fearful that she might commit suicide, Maria said she reached out to AmoLatina’s support team but received little help. “Nothing protective happened,” she said.

SDG told ICIJ that reports about suicidal ideation are treated as urgent and handled as a priority: “These situations are handled with care and discretion.”

‘It’s mental manipulation’

Founded in 1993, Social Discovery Group owns and operates numerous pay-per-interaction dating platforms worldwide along with SOL Networks Ltd., which is the central operating entity within SDG.

Dmitry Volkov is the primary owner of the platforms, which share hosting and payment systems, verification processes and customer support. His investment is via Social Discovery Ventures.

SOL Networks, which is wholly owned by SOL Holdings Ltd., and which owned and operated Dating.com and AmoLatina from 2020 to 2025, is part of the group along with CupidMedia and Dil Mil, which promote and run affiliated dating platforms.

Other companies, including DMM Solutions in the U.S., are involved in what is a complex global system of dating brands and companies with numerous international addresses.

In answer to questions from ICIJ, the Malta Competition and Consumer Affairs Authority said that it was carrying out a “detailed assessment” concerning “SOL Networks, AmoLatina and related activities” to determine if a formal investigation into them was warranted. The regulatory body declined to discuss specific consumer complaints.

Still, Maria’s story was echoed with an eerie consistency by other women during the same period from all corners of the world.

In an industrial village in western Norway, Helen thought a paid platform would protect her, and soon “Benjamin” was telling her he loved her on Dating.com. Benjamin said he was French, divorced, living in Nice and running his own company. He told Helen that he cared for his mother, he had a sister in Paris, was busy with work and traveled internationally.

About 160,000 kroner ($15,000) later, she discovered Benjamin looked a lot like a Russian model, Dimka Tryakin, whose publicly documented life bore no resemblance to the story she had been told. SOL Networks offered Helen a refund of 6,167 kroner (about $666) as a “settlement and release” of her claims that it “allowed untruthful registration of members” on their website and their use of it, which she declined.

SDG told ICIJ that Tryakin had a profile on its platforms and had passed identity verification in accordance with its rules. Tryakin did not respond to questions from ICIJ.

Meanwhile, in Sao Paulo, Silvia, 74, joined DateMyAge after being widowed. Over four years, she believed she was in a serious relationship with a man called Rodrigo, a free user who would never speak live.

“My husband died of bowel cancer. I was lost and ventured onto the site without knowing what I would face,” Silvia told ICIJ. “He (Rodrigo) said he was a lawyer and a widower with homes in different cities and two children, one living in Sao Paulo.”

Silvia said her relationship with Rodrigo collapsed when another woman, Ambar, contacted her to claim that she had been “dating” the same man on the site for two years.

Silvia, a widow living on her late husband’s pension, said she lost 26,879 reais (about $5,000). She said that she suffered severe depression and a stroke because of the stress of being deceived. “My life changed physically and mentally.”

According to SDG, it employs a multilayered approach to detecting fraud, including identity verification, AI-assisted monitoring of requests for money or to move conversations off-platform, and other measures. The company said that in 2025 it removed more than 30,000 accounts suspected of fraudulent activity. SDG did not answer questions put to it by ICIJ about Rodrigo.

Near Pensacola, Fla., recently widowed Rhonda, 64, fell in love with Lorenzo, who said he was a photographer caring for an ill mother and a troubled son. Kind and attentive, unlike, according to Rhonda, her late husband, Lorenzo messaged Rhonda daily on Dating.com and stayed on the app with her until she fell asleep. “He made me believe that we had something we were building together,” Rhonda said. Except he would never talk off the site. “There was always an excuse,” she recalled.

The platform promoted itself as offering “Protection,” “Verification,” and “Deep Affinity.” Over nine months, Lorenzo professed love and even proposed — asking Rhonda’s aunt for permission to marry her niece. But like Maria’s Dan, Lorenzo — who was in fact Brazilian model Jean Moreno, married and living in New York — avoided live video calls and in-person meetings.

Dating.com sent Rhonda a video from Lorenzo saying “there were no false promises” and that things not happening at the right time had caused him to stop talking.  “It’s mental manipulation. I would never have believed it if I hadn’t lived it,” Rhonda said.

Denying Rhonda a refund, Dating.com customer success manager Nekechi told her: “After reviewing Mr. Lorenzo’s social media, we did not find any indications of him being dishonest.” Nekechi added, “The name on his social media is his birth name, while the one used on our dating site is an alias. It is common for members to use aliases for security purposes and to make them comfortable.”

Jean Moreno did not respond to questions from ICIJ.

SDG did not answer questions about Moreno.

SDG told ICIJ that it understood that while some users may be disappointed with their experiences on its platforms, it has investigated every complaint and not all revealed a rules violation; where violations are confirmed, accounts may be warned, suspended or permanently removed, it said.

“I went to counseling to get over the heartbreak,” Rhonda said.

Rhonda married on May 28. After she first met her husband, on Facebook Dating, he drove for three and a half hours from Alabama to meet her in person. “I’m so blessed to have him. He is amazing,” she told ICIJ.

“Sometimes I Just Wanna Die.”

Anna Rowe, co-founder of the romance fraud victims’ group LoveSaid, described creating a fake online identity to deceive someone into a sham romantic relationship as a fraud that is rarely punished.

She said that after multiple Dating.com victims approached her, she logged onto the site to check for herself and instantly was messaged by Tony, 48, who claimed to be an engineer. In fact, he was a German model and actor, and his name was Hilton.

Rowe said that when she questioned Dating.com, saying she did not want to pay if the man was not real, it responded that Tony was “fully approved and verified.”

She said the victims of fake profiles had little legal recourse. “It is awful. It is vile.”

In Greer, S.C., where new construction rises beside quiet neighborhoods and the BMW plant hums in the distance, Dana joined Dating.com and AmoLatina in 2022 after coming out as gay at 52. A woman calling herself Patti contacted Dana. Patti said she was 28, living in Colombia, a model with a 7-year-old son. She was affectionate, vulnerable and intense.

Patti refused to video chat. Every message cost Dana credits. Gifts both real and virtual became central: scores of virtual hearts and hummingbirds, actual roses, a teddy bear for Patti’s son, but Dana drew the line at buying Patti a phone. Dana estimated that she spent between $25,000 and $30,000.

While Dana was grieving a nephew’s death, she said, Patti told her she would harm herself if Dana left the relationship. In one of several messages along similar lines, Patti wrote: “You are the only thing that fills my life and without you, I don’t have a life I am interested in living.” In another, she simply stated: “Sometimes I Just Wanna Die.”

“She manipulated me really badly, especially about suicide,” Dana said.

Then Dana created a second profile under a different name, and “Patti” began courting that one in exactly the same way. Later, Dana learned other women had received the same messages.

“It broke me,” Dana said.

According to SDG, during 2025 its monitoring systems flagged more than 60,000 messages as potentially related to explicit or prohibited content, and employees took enforcement action where violations were confirmed.

Dana traced “Patti” to Angie Miraval, a heavily tattooed Colombian model with thousands of followers on SnackVideo and thousands more on TikTok. She has also appeared as “Patricia” on Whispark and Winkiworld, two platforms for men seeking women, where she exchanges erotic messages and photos.

When Miraval denied involvement, Dating.com wrote to Dana stating that Patti was using its site, then wrote a second time apologizing and saying that Patti had told it that she was not, in fact, managing her use of the site. “For a more comprehensive understanding of the situation, we have included a video in which Patti provides an explanation,” it said. Dana said she laughed at the absurdity of the situation.

Dana is currently recovering from a stroke.

In response to questions from ICIJ, Miraval said she was not the person using the dating platform. She said: “More than one girl has written to me, and I’ve sent reports to the platform asking them to check who that profile is and remove it from the website. The platform responds that it was deleted two years ago!”

“I’m not that person,” she wrote. “I’m tired of saying it.” The photos and videos shared with Dana by the person calling herself Patti on AmoLatina are unquestionably those of Miraval. Dating.com told Dana that Patti had left its site “for personal reasons.”

SDG confirmed that Miraval had a profile on its platforms. It said Miraval, like Daniel Benjamin and Dimka Tryakin, was an identifiable public model or influencer who had been verified in accordance with its rules.

Another Colombian model told ICIJ that she had been recruited by a photographer to share her photos with the dating platform. The second model, who asked not to be named, said models were paid per photograph and video — they received no other payments — and did not chat on the platform. She said that she knew Miraval from their youth.

She said that, in her case, the photographer who recruited for dating platforms aimed at men saw her modeling portfolio and paid her 300,000 Colombian pesos ($83) for her initial profile photos for the site. “They just use our image; they’re the ones who do the talking and deceive men,” said the model, who said she found the whole scene sad and quit quickly. “We don’t talk to anyone. It’s them.”

After the recruiter logged her ID and had her sign a contract, she said, photos were taken of her which were to be used by dating platforms to lure men. She said there were countless beautiful Colombian women and it was not difficult to lure some into the dating business on the promise of easy money and gifts, as many were poor. “When men ask the girls for photos to verify they’re real, the recruiters contact the models and ask them for photos in real time to make the men believe they’re there in real time,” she said.

SDG said it allows free users because “many individuals (particularly in world regions where disposable income is limited) are interested in meeting people internationally but may not be able to afford credit-based participation.”

The fact that people like Daniel Benjamin or Angie Miraval might be publicly known as models or influencers did not disqualify them from participating on SDG sites, nor did it make their profiles illegitimate, the company added.

SDG said that neither Benjamin, Miraval nor several other models ICIJ  asked about were ever under contract with, licensed by, or otherwise specially authorized by SDG or SOL Networks, or any affiliated entity.

Limousines, helicopters, Mad Max and Bach

Volkov, the Russian owner of SDG and its affiliated companies, flies helicopters over Dubai’s glimmering towers, skis the white powdered slopes of Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and crunches curl-ups to maintain his washboard abs. An admirer of Mad Max and Bach, he posts images of himself tilting rotor discs, throttling over desert dunes on motocross bikes, tackling steep glacial slopes and traversing the globe as a self-styled digital nomad. He has reportedly organized a Burning Man camp; claims to have been in a Broadway musical at age 12; and appeared as a child actor in a Russian movie.

In one Instagram-friendly shot, Volkov sits on the rear of a flatbed truck beneath a mounted, belt-fed, Type 77 heavy machine gun next to soldiers in military fatigues and berets indicating they are from Niger. In another, Volkov wrestles with a Mundari tribesman from South Sudan. During the same trip in 2024, he played the organ at sunset to long-horned Ankole cattle, who share a symbiotic relationship with the Mundari.

 

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A post shared by Dmitry Volkov (@volkov.sdv)

“When people ask where I live, I lie,” he wrote on Facebook, captioning a shot of himself standing on a custom-built, off-road “art car” inspired by the post-apocalyptic aesthetic of George Miller’s Mad Max film franchise. “That question is usually meant to spark small talk. Yet it can reveal a lot about one’s  lifestyle, preferences, political views, and social status. San Francisco, Dubai, Ufa. People from different planets, right?”

Ufa is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia, just west of the southern Ural Mountains. It is known for its oil, its gas and its healing honey.

Volkov employs several Malta-based personal assistants to organize limousines, helicopters, entertainment, gifts and art, according to an ad for one more assistant posted by SDG. He calls himself a brand ambassador for Cadillac and the luxury watch brand Jaquet Droz and says that he studied at Harvard Business School. Harvard confirmed that Volkov had taken part in an executive education program at its business school. Jaquet Droz  and Cadillac did not respond to questions from ICIJ.

For years, AnatasiaDate, AmoLatina and other SDG platforms have received poor customer ratings and scathing reviews online, including on the Danish review site Trustpilot and the Brazilian consumer site Reclame Aqui, with many accusing them of being a scam. Anastasia International, which grew into AnastasiaDate, was also the subject of an investigation by Shaun Walker of The Guardian in 2014 and a subsequent book by him that reported on men falling victim “to a number of sophisticated scams” at the hands of “Odessa’s sinister marriage industry.”

Confidential documents leaked to BuzzFeed News and shared with ICIJ as part of 2020’s FinCEN Files investigation show that an AnastasiaDate affiliate, Sellinge Management SA, was the subject of a Suspicious Activity Report filed with the U.S. Department of Treasury. Sent by the Bank of New York Mellon (BNY) to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, the SAR reported 197 suspicious wire payments in 2013-2014 totaling $861,121.92 that were sent by the “shell-like” company.

BNY said many of the payments from November 2013 to August 2014 went through Latvijas Pasta Banka in Latvia, nested with Moscow-based Promsvyazbank, or with money services businesses.  The term “nested” refers to a smaller, unvetted service provider routing transactions through the accounts of a larger, established financial institution.

BNY said Sellinge implemented services offered on AnastasiaDate, including translation and gift services, and then made payments “to private entrepreneurs or representatives that provide the services.” It said Sellinge, which was “purportedly located” in the British Virgin Islands, was associated with “a questionable dating service,” AnastasiaDate, and “its affiliate program may also be fraudulent.”

The SAR, which named Russian Olga Melnikova as the owner of Sellinge, said details of payment were vague and that they involved the high-risk jurisdictions of the BVI, Belize, Moldova, Latvia and Ukraine. Separate records leaked to Süddeutsche Zeitung and shared with ICIJ show that AnastasiaDate Ltd. changed its corporate name to Dating.com Group Ltd. in May 2016 but both brands continued to operate. Sellinge was liquidated in 2017. A suspicious activity report (SAR) is not an accusation, it’s a way to alert government regulators and law enforcement to irregular activity and possible crimes. ICIJ was unable to contact Melnikova.

SDG told ICIJ that AnastasiaDate was not aware of any investigation related to a SAR or similar reports. The company said that it rejected the characterization of its products as “scam platforms:” “The rules that govern how people communicate on our platforms exist to protect users from scams and unwanted contact.”

In May, Russian news outlet Verstka published an investigation into Web Flex — a Tbilisi, Georgia-based operation whose employees reportedly profit from users of the SDG sites AnastasiaDate and Dating.com.

Verstka reported that Web Flex operators — mostly Ukrainian refugees and Russians who fled after the 2022 mobilization of military reservists — work around the clock in shifts, posing as ordinary users and chatting on Dating.com and AnastasiaDate with lonely people around the world. Several operators told Verstka that they worked systematically to extract money from Americans and Europeans through messages, virtual gifts and expensive real-world purchases.

Verstka reported that AI tools are used extensively to generate photos, videos and voice messages. Verstka said “Dating.com categorically denies any collaboration with companies like Web Flex.”

Georgia-based WebFlex holds a database of approximately 2,000 profiles of models from around the world (although not Russia), feeding Dating.com and AnastasiaDate, according to staff quoted by Verstka. It said chat operators could choose from up to 300 profiles at a time to interact with paying clients. Job sites including Jooble advertise live vacancies for models and chat operators (with duties described as conducting correspondence on behalf of “the girls,” meaning models) and English optional, night shifts preferred to match North American time zones and recruitment via Telegram accounts.

SDG told Verstka, which spoke with one American man who had spent $8,000 on Dating.com in one month, that the leaders of Web Flex were never employees of SDG or any other company in the group. SDG told ICIJ that it has retained an outside firm to investigate Web Flex’s activities and had suspended payments to its affiliate partner.

Meanwhile, three Ukrainian software companies, ChatOS, Sender.Services and Quick Simple Bot, or QSB, have advertised browser extensions and other software products designed for chat operators to use on dating platforms, including the Social Discovery Group sites AnastasiaDate,  Dating.com, DateMyAge and AmoLatina, allowing chats with multiple accounts at the same time,  with machine-like efficiency.

The ChatOs “Chatoptimizer” includes features like multi-accounts in one tab, faster messaging, canned responses, “conversation management,” analytics and profile administration “for girls and their translators,”  a reference to free-user models and the managers and administrators of the third-party operators that recruit them. The Chatoptimizer offers pre-prepared phrases for quick sending; a global blacklist tool to exclude unwanted suitors; access to a Dating.com Telegram group; and even an autopilot that chats when the user is offline. ChatOs and the other browser extensions also list different tariffs for chats, mails, missed mails and invitations which vary according to sites.

“You don’t need to worry about configuring content or adjusting/changing sending parameters,” ChatOS instructions say. “Just select Autopilot mode, click ‘Start Sending,’ and the system will randomly send invitations to different categories of men.”

Sender.Services advertises a similar browser extension that allows users for a payment in crypto to send invitations and messages to 40 dating services, including Dating.com, Arabiandate.com and AmoLatina.com, using agency dashboards.

SDG told ICIJ that it did not develop, market or distribute ChatOs or similar applications. The company said that it prohibited profiles operated by chat automation software, agents, bots or third parties. It added that SDG platforms included a Let’s Mingle function that permits a user to broadcast their message to hundreds of users simultaneously.

Volkov has invested in blockchain technologies, banking and payment companies, real estate, social media apps, a learning platform and AI. He was reportedly an early investor in the music recognition app Shazam and has invested through SDG in Patreon, which allows people to donate to content creators.

Sanctions and Russian connections

In response to a wide range of questions from ICIJ to Volkov and his companies, SDV’s public relations team said SDV had participated as a partner in a number of global private equity and venture capital funds, including Blockchain Capital, DN Capital, Khosla, Lakestar and NEA. It said SDG was one of SDV’s investments and was co-founded by Volkov.

In 2019, Volkov’s SDVentures and Alla Gubenko, the founder of SOL Holdings and a key shareholder and former director of SOL Networks (a chain of dating platforms with more than 8,000 domain names, according to the domain search engine Whoxy) merged assets to create Dating.com Group.

Gubenko is the daughter of Sergey Gubenko, who headed a local branch of the Vladimir Putin-aligned United Russia political party in the Tyumen region from 2007 to 2012. She worked as head of human resources with Volkov’s IT-Online from 2008 to 2011. In response to questions from ICIJ, Gubenko said she no longer had any involvement with SDG’s management or operations.

SDG does not do business in Russia or Belarus, and its platforms and services are not available in those markets. The company declined to confirm for ICIJ how many countries it covers, its staff numbers, its user numbers, or its revenues, stating that it was not a public company and was not required to release detailed figures on these. Online, it has made widely varying claims on user numbers.

Gubenko, Volkov and Latvian model Lasma Kuhtarska founded a payment company called NaudaPay, also known by the brand name Noda, which was actively backed by SDV. Gubenko and Volkov are no longer involved in the company.

In October 2022, Ukrainian authorities sanctioned Volkov for alleged commercial activity generating income for the Russian government. SDV’s public relations team said Volkov disputes the allegation and is challenging the penalty in court.

Dimitri Berezniakov, the founder of Verified Love, a website dedicated to verifying dating profiles and exposing scammers, told ICIJ that an honest dating platform lets its customers move to direct communication once there is a personal connection.

Berezniakov, who started a legitimate matchmaking service in Ukraine in the late 1990s, said that if the only way to talk is through paid messages, something is wrong. And if a profile looks like it came from a modeling agency, with professional lighting, makeup and studio poses, it probably did.

He told ICIJ that competition and a lack of regulation corrupted international dating into “a huge scam industry.” Ukraine alone, he estimated, is home to about 1,000 agencies employing thousands of people to operate scam profiles.

Raising red flags

Simon Newman, who heads the Online Dating and Discovery Association trade group, said that romance fraud has been a persistent problem as the industry has grown.

“We hate scammers,” Newman said. “We want to stop fraud where we can. We also want to call out bad practices in the sector. But it is not without its challenges.”

The only global trade body for the online dating sector, ODDA, said it represents 70% to 75% of the market, made up of about 500 brands across 15 or 16 member companies. Among them are Tinder and its sister Match (two of the most popular dating platforms in the world), Hinge, MeetMe, Plenty of Fish, LOVOO and OkCupid. SDG is not a member.

Newman said the ODDA only accepts companies that meet their membership standards, but he acknowledged that ODDA had seen data suggesting that on some sites as many as 70% of profiles may be fraudulent. While Newman said agencies such as the FBI and the U.K.’s National Crime Agency are pursuing scammers, such active cases represent “the tip of the iceberg.”

Some governments are making initial stabs at tightening regulations on the fraud-ridden sector. The U.K.’s Online Safety Act and the EU’s Digital Services Act expanded platform safety duties. Australia’s voluntary online dating safety code requires transparency reports on account removals.

In the U.S., a proposed Romance Scam Prevention Act would require online dating services to notify users who had interacted with a profile later removed for fraudulent activity. “The goal is to raise red flags,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David G. Valadao, R-Calif., told ICIJ. “This is a piece of legislation that fixes one aspect and helps with one solution.”

Valadao said he introduced the bill after hearing about online swindlers from people in his district, in California’s Central Valley region. The bill passed the U.S. House  but remains held up in the Senate, he said.

SDG said romance fraud was a systemic industrywide  problem, not one confined to any single platform and that no operator could guarantee the complete elimination of fraudulent activity, but it invested meaningfully in verification, monitoring and enforcement systems to promote genuine international connections between real people.

A team of chat operators

In New York, Elizabeth, 67, a retired exercise physiologist and aerobics instructor, got a peek behind the curtain of YourTravelMates.com upon joining a year after the death of her second husband. YourTravelMates is operated by the Social Discovery Group subsidiary Dil Mil.

“Enzo,” or Lorenzo, said he ran a restaurant on Italy’s glittering Amalfi Coast, had a boat and a playful cat named Fernando. “I thought he liked me,” Elizabeth said from the Manhattan apartment where she now lives with her daughter.

Every text, photo view or message she opened cost her money. She was even asked by the platform to send Enzo birthday gifts. The more she talked to him, the more the meter ran.

Soon her profile, without her consent, started to appear on AmoLatina, EuroDate and Hotti.com. Thinking she was gaming the system, she would switch platforms to keep introductory prices low. Instead, she found the same man on every site.

Elizabeth communicated with him through various platforms and soon was  bombarded with messages from Enzo asking her to buy gifts, attach a photo, attach a video, boost her profile, become a premium member — all at great cost. When she asked, Enzo denied that he was a free user.

“I want to marry you. I want everything with you. You are the reason for my happiness. I love you so much that you can not imagine,” Enzo wrote.

Enzo never video chatted. He never met Elizabeth. She estimated that she spent $50,000. “I wasted six years of my life,” she said.

She learned two of her friends had been approached by Enzo on the same platform — even as he was professing his undying love for her. “He told my friend his cat was called Coco,” she said.

As she hunted for answers, Elizabeth contacted a Filipino called Robert Wilson who had posted videos on social media attacking what he calls sham dating sites. Wilson told Elizabeth — in Messenger texts reviewed by ICIJ — that he was paid $400 a month to oversee a team of chat operators, via a dashboard, who conducted scripted interactions with people like her, pretending to be actual love interests on multiple SDG sites, to keep them chatting and paying.

“All the photos are staged,” Wilson wrote to Elizabeth, adding that there were operators like him around the world.  Wilson said he had hired free users for SDG sites, via Facebook ads, while working as a platform manager for seven months from November 2023 to June 2024.

Wilson has uploaded videos summarizing his allegations on Facebook and YouTube. The videos show Dating.com’s “administrators’ panel,” an internal accounting system, and explain how chat operators’ earnings are calculated based on how often they communicate with paying users. Wilson’s account of the panel mirrors the allegations made in the U.S. lawsuit against DMM Solutions, which like Dil Mil is part of SDG.

Wilson, who declined to comment to ICIJ, also uploaded photos and video footage of Dating.com chat operator colleagues around the globe, who he says in social media postings worked with him servicing multiple paid members at the same time on multiple SDG sites, on a commission basis using scripts.

In one video, Wilson said: “This network is one. They have different names, but they are all one. … The company has hired workers to chat to consume all your credits.”

ICIJ independently confirmed that several of the people in the video did work for SDG and we reached out to them. None responded to questions. Wilson exchanged texts with ICIJ over several months but declined to answer questions.

In a string of texts to Elizabeth,  Wilson said that the chat operators behind the platforms typically come from what he described as “poor countries,” including the Philippines, Russia, China and Colombia.

In a statement to ICIJ, SDG said that the person presenting himself as Robert Wilson “was never an employee of SDG or any other part of the group. We believe that this is not in fact his real name.” It said “Wilson” was a third-party external contractor with whom SDG cut ties in 2025 “following evidence of his improper personal conduct and breaches of our rules governing third-party contractor behaviour.”

SDG said he demanded “inflated payments” as a contractor. “He made clear to us that if he did not get those payments, then he would pursue a public disinformation campaign against SDG.” The company said it had issued multiple cease-and-desist letters and was considering further legal action against him.

Fight for accountability

In Queensland, Australia, Melanie, 53, is recovering at an uncle’s farm from the trauma of a betrayal that triggered a complete breakdown. Once a high-earning med-tech professional, Melanie — who now spends time building furniture from reclaimed wood — recalled for ICIJ how her life collapsed after the grueling end of her 14-year marriage.

She spied an ad for Dating.com while searching online for divorce attorneys; she clicked, and a child psychologist in Córdoba, Argentina — muscular, with a dog named Hades — contacted her instantly. The man, calling himself Rodrigo David Gonzalez, said he was in his early 40s with no kids, an only child who had grown up poor. Before long, he was declaring his undying love for Melanie.

“From the moment our paths crossed, my life has taken an unexpected and wonderful turn,” he wrote to Melanie. “Every meeting, every conversation has been like a flash of light in my world.” He sent her photos of himself on the beach, in football shirts, eating meals alone; in the bath as a child; and with his parents both as a boy and a man.

With Melanie online, Rodrigo said his heart beat to “the rhythm of a heavenly symphony.” To his ears, her “laughter was like a melody” and her eyes were “beacons that illuminate even the darkest days.”

But he said they could not meet because he had information that dangerous people wanted to get hold of and it would be unsafe for her.

Every interaction cost Melanie. Rodrigo, she said, harangued her to receive and send more letters, to buy credits in bulk, to upgrade, to invest in “them.” One long-winded story about a ghost cost her $1,600, she said.

Isolated, depleted and by now battling breast cancer, Melanie was wary, but still she kept paying. When she disclosed her sickness, she recalled, Rodrigo said his mother had had cancer and claimed to have spent a lot of time studying oncology.

In seven months, she said she spent $136,000.

When she questioned him, he grew angry — “Enough of defaming me!” — withdrew, then returned, pleading for conversation. “It felt like abandoning him,” she said.

Melanie hired a private investigator who found “Rodrigo” was in fact a model named Carlos Ignacio Rodriguez Jauregui, who didn’t live in Córdoba, had two sisters and grew up in a wealthy family.

Melanie sued SOL Networks, Dating.com and Jauregui, alleging that the sites engaged “Rodrigo” as their agent and had failed to perform appropriate verification checks. The companies at first dismissed her concerns — even telling her to “find a hobby” — but later reached a confidential settlement with Melanie.

Melanie said SOL Networks and Dating.com denied that Jauregui had ever been an employee, agent or representative. According to her, the dating platform did not concede that “Rodrigo” had misrepresented himself or his profession despite numerous differences between his story and Jauregui’s real-life story.

She provided ICIJ with photos of Jauregui on other dating sites over several years, vowing that she would continue to pursue him. “I went after Dating.com and they gave me back every cent I spent,” she said. “Now I have to go after Ignacio and force him to be accountable, because it is not okay to steal from broken people.”

Jauregui did not respond to ICIJ’s questions.

An SDG spokesperson said it was not able to discuss anything regarding Melanie due to legal constraints.

The spokesperson added, “We have not been made aware of anything other than to suggest the situation was previously resolved to the mutual satisfaction of both sides.”

In June, Dating.com advertised for its first ever Chief Breakup Officer, a part-time, remote position paying $3,000 a month to someone whose entire job is ending other people’s relationships for them.

Jamie Bronstein, one of Dating.com’s resident relationship experts, told Vice.com: “The statistics show us there is a problem with tough communication, emotional responsibility, and accountability.”

Anna Rowe reacted to the news with astonishment:  “Can you believe this? Genius for a company where the users can’t actually meet the people in the photos.”

Contributors: Dean Starkman, Kathleen Cahill, Angie Wu, Mikhail Maglov, Mikhail Rubin, Jacob Borg, Sandra Crucianelli, Eiliv Frich Flydal.
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988. To find support outside the U.S., visit Lifeline International or Open Counseling.