"When I was young and naive, I sent twenty dollars to someone in Eastern Europe. I got more requests for money and a gameboy for her son. I almost sent my gameboy too. When I said I could not send the money because I didn't have any, she stopped emailing me. Lesson learned."
I got a Match.com email from a "lady" in Russia. At first I was a little sympathetic but "her" emails became suspicious almost immediately. I would email something like "tell me what you did last night" and "her" responses were poetry and declarations of love. Finally "she" said "I'm coming to you, I'm working on the papers". It sounded like a threat. Then woe betide "she" needed 400.00 to get the paperwork completed. I was tempted to send monopoly money and even looked in to contacting the FBI. But then I thought that they probably couldn't do anything and I might bring troubles on myself. I suspect the emails were computer generated and sent to thousands.
Finally I wrote back that this isn't normally how its done, usually we would find out more about each other then maybe I'd visit and we'd see how we got along, etc. I never got another email.
Several years ago, a close friend of mine almost fell for the same "Russian internet lady in need" who had a sick mother in the hospital. My friend was on the verge of sending her money "for medicine" when he told me about the situation. Using Google and Snopes.com, in just a short time I was able to find countless examples of nearly identical emails and stories of about similar scams with just slight variations! Needless to say, he didn't send her any money.