Steffen S.

First off, I have used this site (as a man) off and on for 6 years now.

Mostly this is a cool site and works quite well. But I am writing this from the male perspective. I have had some great experiences and some bad ones. Mostly good ones because being 43 (37 when I first registered), I was old enough to manage to dodge the problems (which I will get to in my second paragraph).
I eventually met this one girl from there and we met for a day in Minsk (I was temporarily living in Warsaw/Poland, only 300 miles from Minsk at that time) and we decided we got on well, and booked a weekend in Prague. What followed was 3 1/2 years of being together.
To end up in that rather unexpected relationship I wrote to, and was written to, by a lot of girls. I also went on dinner-dates and spent some time with 4 or 5 other girls in Minsk around that time and all the ones I arranged to meet behaved well, were civilized, decent girls. Just no chemistry, except with the one, so it was a series of nice meals/days/evenings with no hard feelings either way.
There really are some genuinely nice people on that site well worth meeting.

But there is also a shadow-side and it just has to be handled or you will end up having a bad day (or worse, a bad 2 week vacation with a real demon). A lot of girls there don't exist. Fake profiles. Stolen pictures. They will try to get money and will quite quickly come with the 'I live in this <bad place> and I have no passport/visa'. AVOID. It's just a scam. As soon as you get that message: ignore/delete.

Some girls are fairly straight-up about their goals: money and companionship, possible physical relations, for a pre-determined price. There is a level of honesty to such openness which I appreciate. And I guess enough men will go for that for them to be there in such numbers. If this is what you want, well, its available.

Some girls will be nice-ish and then on the holiday will mostly ignore you. Has not happened to me, but it happened to a mate who didn't really 'screen' his companion very well.

A girl with great photos and looks, 10+ years younger, who will go on a vacation with you... but typically will only write very short, 2,3 or 4 word replies to your questions: => trash can. She will also speak only 2,3 or 4 words with you when she is on that trip to Paris/London/Monaco you just paid for but will happily text all of her friends all the time and take a lot of selfies.

Overall, my experience with ladies from Latin America, Belarus and Asia has been relatively positive. People were mostly who they claimed to be. I had two fantastic trips to Thailand and the Philippines where I was shown things by a local, way off the regular tourist routes taken by westerners. The experiences were worth a thousand membership fees and I am still in touch with these people.
The charlatans claiming to be from that part of the world are easily identified and not too common either. The same cannot be said for Russian and Ukrainian women (or who claim to be in Ukraine/Russia. And they are also not even always in those countries, they just claim to be. Of course you will never meet them because they have no intention of ever meeting you, only your money.
I had a really interesting Skype call with a girl in Odessa, but my firewall was telling me the connection was to Toulon, France ;) And in the end she wanted money.

So summing up:

If you want something more than a fling:
There are plenty of really decent girls and women on that site.
You have to sift through scammers. But the same goes for proper dating sites as well. Different kind of scams, and time-wasters, but ther are everywhere.
Never buy anything for someone you have not Skyped with AND have a copy of a passport.
Don't send money to anyone you have not already met in person. Ever. Just. Don't.
Meet the girl/lady in her home town first, if you can and its practical. Failing that, a weekend trip. Nothing too complicated. If you hit it off, then you're set for whatever is next.