How work permit and visa fraudsters Lure People into giving them their Hard-Earned Money

UK work permits and lottery email scams have been appearing in people’s inboxes for quite some time now and the number is ever-rising. First, it was easier to distinguish between junk email and what was genuine, but with the passage of time scammers have also become smart. They understand how job seekers and those who wish to emigrate spend their time looking for opportunities using platforms like LinkedIn and other job websites.

Whenever you receive such an e-mail, the first and only thing you must need to do is to delete it immediately. Sadly, not everyone does that and as a result we often get to hear about how someone was scammed into paying a hefty amount to a fake person. These scammers construct a reasonable and convincing e-mail. They add some verifiable correct facts so their message sounds legitimate.

Remember

• Ask yourself why would someone take pain to email you? Did you enter any lottery or applied for job in the first place? These scammers may sometime set up a fake company and even if you try contacting on the number, there might be someone to answer the phone on the number given. It is also seen these scammers use premium numbers and the person calling is charged hefty amount by their phone company.
• It may often have no address mentioned in their correspondence. It is always recommended to Google them by their details stated in their correspondence.
• The emails often contain a graphic attachment such as an official logo (which is obviously used without permission) and other attachment such as a scanned copy of (fake) winning cheque or a bogus letter congratulating you upon your win.

Ask yourself

Would anyone in their sane mind use a medium such as email to send such an important information / document without knowing you in the first instance? All the official visa documents are handled via trusted couriers such as DHL or VFS etc. Would a well established company ever send you email using a free Webmail-based e-mail account such as yahoo.co.uk or hotmail.co.uk? Nope, and this should be enough to stop you to get lured and delete this e-mail right away.

Watch out

Some more things to watch-out in these phishing emails and LinkedIn messages include:

• The first email that you receive would avoid the mention of any sort of “processing/claim or courier fee”. At this point the scammers just want to pique your interest and sound as genuine as possible. However, what they would be interested in is your full name, address, date of birth They ask for these details so that the information can be later used to forge any documents in later correspondence.
• It might include the word “Confidential”. They would instruct you not to mention it to anyone.
• When you receive a message via LinkedIn, you’ll receive an email notification. It would ask you to visit some link and you would be directed to a fake profile.
• You will often see that such profiles may have very few connections or parts of the profile may either be blank or have barely a few sentences written in them.
• The fraudsters send a LinkedIn spam invitations to connect with other members. These invitations arrive in the LinkedIn inbox, ultimately makes the friend request seem less suspicious, especially if the criminal is one of the mutual among your connections.
• If you have been naïve enough to start correspondence with them via phone or email, they might commit to a work visa permit. As the correspondence continues, they might start to point out different things which are missing and then they offer to handle them on your behalf for a small sum of money and that is how the whole process starts.

UK Visa Consultants are more than happy to assist anyone in Pakistan who has received such emails or messages claiming to be from UK Home Office, British High Commission or a company in the UK etc. Should you not wish to delete the email or message straightaway; forward it to our email info@ukvisaconsultants.comor visit our website www.ukvisaconsultants.com and we shall endevour to verify it before you take further action.