Woman Hoping for Green Card Marriage Sues Dating Company for Not Delivering

Woman Hoping for Green Card Marriage Sues Dating Company for Not Delivering
Jul 23, 2015 By eChinacities.com

Editor's Note: Ah, the green card marriage. A familiar story to most of us at this point. This article from the Chinese media gives a new twist on an old story. We've heard about the Canadian man who paid big money to use a dating site that translated love letters from Chinese to English. This story tells it from the other side- a Chinese woman who used the same kind of site hoping to find a rich foreign husband. However, when the site did not deliver, she decided to take the company to court and sue them for fraud.

Divorced middle-aged women in China often have the same dream: find a foreign boyfriend online and marry him for a green card. However, after spending 28,800 Yuan on a dating service, Zou from Hubei still did not find Mr. Right. Therefore, she decided to sue the dating company in a Shanghai court.

Zou is 40 years old, with a middle school education. After her divorce, she was left to live alone with her teenage daughter. In 2013, she suddenly had an idea: find a foreign boyfriend and marry him so that she and her daughter can emigrate.

However, Zou could neither speak English or use email. She found a Shanghai company online that provided the type of dating service she was interested in. The website advertised that it provided “translation services,” and would help translate love letters between men and women registered to the site (similar to the dating site that duped the elderly Canadian man this spring).

A “Translation” Contract

Zou thought she had found her golden ticket to the West and immediately called the company. To register, she recorded a video introducing herself to be translated and posted on the site.

Zou then flew to Shanghai from Hubei that November and signed a “translation service,” contract with the company. The contract stipulated that Zou pay the dating and translation company 38,800 Yuan- 28,800 upfront, and the last 10,000 after she starting dating one of the site's male clients.

The company promised that if Zou fully registered with the site, she would receive love letters from foreign men within 10 days. They also said that they would translate and deliver Zou's Chinese love letters for foreign men and translate all of the foreigner's letters to Chinese.

Under the contract, Zou was obligated to actively cooperate with the company and reply to the men's letters the day after receiving them. If she did not reply in a timely manner, the company could stop service with no refund. She had to spent time and energy replying to the men; the company wanted her to be emotionally invested in the process.

Zou was also not allowed to contact the men without the help of the company. If she did this, the contract would be canceled with no refund.

Zou signed the contract and began to exchange letters with foreign men. However, after some time, Zou began to have doubts about the company and its results. She said that the foreign men were either 80 year old grandpas, or 20 year old punks. Zou felt cheated by the company.

Taking it to Court

In December, Zou, frustrated with the company, decided to take the company to court for fraud. The company officially called itself a translation company because it did not have the proper qualifications to register as a foreign matchmaking service. However, the company advertised marriage services to potential clients.

At the trial, the company said that it did not provide foreign matchmaking services. They said that Zou expressly requested the translation of dating-related materials, and the company provided services and achieved results. The company added that the plaintiff then refused to cooperate and the contract between the two could not be properly fulfilled.

Zou insisted that she had never successfully began dating a foreigner through the company, and was therefore entitled to a refund, according to the contract.

However, the company presented two supplementary pieces of evidence that rendered Zou speechless. The evidence included a record of Zou and a foreign man staying together in a hotel in Wuhan including call and flight records. The company also presented records of Zou and another foreign man together in a hotel in Shanghai. In the face of the presented evidence, Zou applied to withdraw the case.

Can't Buy Me Love

The judge in the case said that it was problematic that Zou was trying to date a foreigner to get a green card, rather than for love. Zou, because she was uneducated, did not know how to communicate with foreign men. Communication on both sides was therefore coordinated by the translation company. The judge said that it would be difficult to prove that this was fraud.

Secondly, Zou had signed a “translation services contract,” with the defendant. With the help of the translation services provided Zou had successfully interacted with a number of foreign men. The judge said that because she had signed a contract for the translation services, she had no one but herself to blame.

The judge reminded Zou that marriage should be built on love. Marriages built on a green card, money, or other material reasons will result in unhappiness. Zou's encounter should hopefully cause others to think twice about jumping into such an arrangement.

Warning:The use of any news and articles published on eChinacities.com without written permission from eChinacities.com constitutes copyright infringement, and legal action can be taken.

Keywords: China green card marriage China translation dating service

7 Comments

All comments are subject to moderation by eChinacities.com staff. Because we wish to encourage healthy and productive dialogue we ask that all comments remain polite, free of profanity or name calling, and relevant to the original post and subsequent discussion. Comments will not be deleted because of the viewpoints they express, only if the mode of expression itself is inappropriate.

Guest128304

there are a lot of shite services out there. try chinese love links for example :)

Jul 30, 2015 11:18 Report Abuse

Guest14306758

Not only divorced middle aged women, plenty of young Chinese ladies only dream about foreign men, deal with it.

Jul 24, 2015 21:19 Report Abuse

kuntmans

"marriages built on a green card, money, or other material reasons will result in unhappiness". thankfully few of those around then.

Jul 24, 2015 17:29 Report Abuse

cindyfromhaha

Haha, so interesting. Rich men are everywhere, why try to find a forengner when she can not even communicate in English? Even if she succeeded in finding one, what she would face would be nothing but a tragedy.

Jul 24, 2015 16:53 Report Abuse

tbaly

Is it Chnlove.com or Qpid? what is the the name of the dating agency that that this article did not mention. Who is the real bad guy in this story?

Jul 24, 2015 11:41 Report Abuse

coineineagh

ha ha? dunno what to think about this story. mercenary dating and swindles and fraud claims and stupidity all round. what was thw woman thinking when she expected to emigrate with no language skills?what was in her head when she payed the money? did she seriously believe she could sue for fraud?? with these dumbfounding (heh) levels of stupidity, there is scarcity and market opportunities everywhere i guess. ignorange is capital. "stay away Google and free porn sites: stop diminishing our scarcity profits!"

Jul 23, 2015 17:22 Report Abuse

Guest2606904

No worse than students who can't speak English wanting to study in America.

Jul 25, 2015 13:54 Report Abuse