Ah yes, mail order brides. I've met like 8 in my life. Some in Alaska. Most all at the same place and all, at some point, married the same guy. Never at the same time though. There is a small resort up in the Hood River area I used to go with my parents every year, as they arranged SCUBA diving trips throughout the PNW.
I forget the name of this resort specifically, but we always took it as we were able to rent the entire place out to the people we were taking on the trip. Owner was a dude named Mike and his staff was entirely his wife and ex-wives. They were all bumpkin mail order bitches from Russia who weren't smart enough to abuse the American legal system. I kind of admire the ingenuity in this. The women were probably from rural areas and weren't strangers to actually working, and not educated enough to really learn English (especially not the older ones). Mike took the trouble to learn Russian though and I only ever heard him speaking to them in Russian. Front desk cute current wife spoke broken ass English though. This was like ten years ago or so, I'm sure he has a different one now.
Seems his entire ploy was to get one in her early 20's. Stay with her for 8-10 years before divorcing and getting another. How he convinced them to stay and work there I have absolutely no fucking clue.
A ton of my father's friends in Alaska had mail order broads too. He is a fisherman and spent a lot of time in Alaska throughout the 70's and 80's. Getting mail order Russians there is extremely common, as the fisherman have tons of cash to spend and live in areas that are in short supply of women. Ketchikan would have been a shitty place to be, no doubt.
Entire agencies cater to rich fisherman to go on "tours" to Moscow where you meet/greet/fuck whoever they're trying to broker you with. The one I knew best was a total lifelong bachelor type and went on at least ten of these trips and never married anyone. In classic fashion the guy does have like 4 kids with various women though. The fisherman seem to do well with these girls though. For reasons mentioned above.
I'm sure it CAN work. But you really need to get the dumber ones who are not educated, speak shit English and are barely literate. The smart ones will just fuck over if you're not an Alpha motherfucker who does whatever he wants. They expect this. But it creates a vicious cycle since mostly beta shitheads go for the service.