#visa scams

[neha4321]

Looking for a trusted visa agency to simplify your visa application process? Learn how to select the best visa agency, avoid scams, and ensure a smooth, stress-free experience. From tourist to work visas, this guide offers insights into services, costs, and essential tips for choosing the right visa agency for your international travel needs.

[grits-galraisedinthesouth]

The Royal Grift Rewind: "Sparry's Ameri-CON"

POV's Fanmail Friday: Prince Harry on A1 Visa

Edited to add: The Me Too Sussex Couple:

Allegedly (since #megxit) MEgain's retort even to Queen Elizabeth's FACE was "what about Andrew!!" When the duo publicly changed their minds and DEMANDED prince & princess titles upon the Queen's death, allegedly Meghan complained (what about Andrew) "what about Beatrice & Eugenie who have HRH!!!"

I've always believed The Sussex Duo is legally challenging EVERY attempt the Palace makes to sever ties with the duo.... they've used Andrew's behavior & legal troubles to blackmail the palace.

@and-the-void-looked-back When the Queen gave them 1 year to make a go of it in NORTH AMERICA (canada) she made a deal with the devil. The duo used every excuse: sars-cov-2, mythcarriage, etc to extend their "benefits." K Charles gave the people a creative lie: "escalate family tensions"

Better Up also needs to be investigated ASAP!!

Exactly @trexalicious

[ivovynckier]

Is this the hole for the H-1B visas?

[bigjaws]

so my bf’s mom is like romantically/emotionally stunted and she’s “engaged” to a married man with three kids whose wife doesn’t know.

he was deported to his country and doesn’t have permission to come to the usa which is actually good because he’s a literal evil person, a liar, cheater and scammer schemer extraordinaire. he is also an abuser and has evil beliefs and the power to commit violence upon others in his country (he’s a policeman and has told us horrible things with glee) even tho he obviously doesn’t have any interest in her and only wants her to open up credit cards and suck money and gifts out of her she swallows his obvious lies.

she is in love because in her own words, she hasn’t had sex in many years and has natural needs. she is also has fantastical and unrealistic ideas about love, relationships and marriage that led her to accept a proposal and plastic ring three days after meeting him.

literally everyone in her life has told her this is a bad idea and not even the actual factual truth of him literally being legally married and living and fucking his poor wife won’t stop her from meeting him in other countries, decorating her home according to his style, and paying for his expenses or even marrying him which is crazy because bigamy is illegal but i guess all common sense gets thrown out the window.

the fact that she is still in this “relationship” is damaging my own relationship with her and literally makes me angry to the point of wanting to throw myself in a river.

i cannot handle the fact this woman who i have to share an important person with, who i have to make plans with and have conversations and welcome into my home is knowingly planning a life together with a married man who, by her own admission, is still romantically and sexually involved with his wife who knows no better in an extremely patriarchal society where she has all to lose, and i still have to respect her!

her own son, my boyfriend of six years, is suffering this to the point where after their names are mentioned he checks out of conversations. its very hard for me to act respectful and manage myself nicely around her nasty plans with him, and to keep quiet or act like nothing is wrong when i truly feel nauseous!

at the beginning of this i tried to see her as a victim of this man, but then i realized that she has all the information and conscience to make the correct decision, including the advice of friends and family who have pleaded with her to leave him, but doesn’t based on putting her own “happiness” (if happiness is having a long distance boyfriend who only calls you when his wife is not around to ask for money) over everyone else’s!

and then i am slapped in the face with comments about the fact she is a christian and morally correct person and i am not because i don’t attend church or that i don’t have as much value based on the money i make or how much i help compared to her! but no, i have to be greatly grateful to her because she helps my household with some grocery items (in which her son lives and does not pay rent) or random knickknacks she brings unannounced and it makes me so angry all over again to the point i want to tell her:

lady (if you can even be called that) you are breaking up a marriage and a family knowingly in exchange of pleasure, you have no heart nor brains and you have no space to judge my morality or weight my importance in any context in this universe, i hope you feel as ostracized by your family and society as you will be in the hell your holy book says you will for your nauseating actions!

[legalconservativepost]

Gang preparing fake financial documents busted

Just two days after the arrest of three persons involved in a fake C-form sale racket, the district police busted a gang involved in preparing fake financial documents here today.

City Police Commissioner Gaurav Yadav claimed that the gangsters were involved in preparing fake documents like bank statements and loan statements and were “facilitating” students for procuring study visa in different countries.

The racket was being run from the premise of Education Boutique, Prime Tower. On a tip-off, the police laid a trap and nabbed three persons, Atul Vashisht, resident of Panchkula, Kamal Sehgal of the local Wariana, and Naresh Kumar, resident of the local Preet Nagar, Ladowali Road, from the Prime Tower.

Yadav revealed that Atul Vashisht runs Daffodils Study Abroad, Sector 22-C, Chandigarh, Kamal Sehgal runs Taff Educations, Green Park, near Narinder Cinema, Jalandhar, while Naresh Kumar runs Worldwide Career Consultants, Badwal Complex, near Narinder Cinema, Jalandhar.

Their fourth accomplice Pavit Brar, a Director of Education Boutique, is yet to be arrested. The police had recovered fabricated documents, supposed to be issued by different banks, from the arrested persons.

The racketeers used to advertise through media and were offering “readymade” documents to students desirous of going abroad for higher studies in different foreign countries.

A case under sections 419, 420, 465, 467, 471 and 120-B of the IPC was registered at Navi Baradari police station.

[globetrek]

Gang preparing fake financial documents busted

Just two days after the arrest of three persons involved in a fake C-form sale racket, the district police busted a gang involved in preparing fake financial documents here today.

City Police Commissioner Gaurav Yadav claimed that the gangsters were involved in preparing fake documents like bank statements and loan statements and were “facilitating” students for procuring study visa in different countries.

The racket was being run from the premise of Education Boutique, Prime Tower. On a tip-off, the police laid a trap and nabbed three persons, Atul Vashisht, resident of Panchkula, Kamal Sehgal of the local Wariana, and Naresh Kumar, resident of the local Preet Nagar, Ladowali Road, from the Prime Tower.

Yadav revealed that Atul Vashisht runs Daffodils Study Abroad, Sector 22-C, Chandigarh, Kamal Sehgal runs Taff Educations, Green Park, near Narinder Cinema, Jalandhar, while Naresh Kumar runs Worldwide Career Consultants, Badwal Complex, near Narinder Cinema, Jalandhar.

Their fourth accomplice Pavit Brar, a Director of Education Boutique, is yet to be arrested. The police had recovered fabricated documents, supposed to be issued by different banks, from the arrested persons.

The racketeers used to advertise through media and were offering “readymade” documents to students desirous of going abroad for higher studies in different foreign countries.

A case under sections 419, 420, 465, 467, 471 and 120-B of the IPC was registered at Navi Baradari police station.

[rightnewshindi]

VISA Scam; भतीजे और चचेरे भाई ने वीजा के नाम ओर ठगे 2.7 करोड़, जानें कैसे दिया फ्रॉड को अंजाम

VISA Scam Gujarat: गुजरात के वडोदरा में वीजा घोटाले का मामला सामने आया है। यहां एक व्यक्ति के साथ 2.7 करोड़ रुपये की जबरन वसूली हुई है। दर्शन पटेल नाम के इस व्यक्ति ने आरोप लगाया कि उसे अपने भतीजे ��ो अलग-अलग मौकों पर पैसे देने पड़े, पहले विजिटर वीजा के बहाने, फिर वर्क परमिट के लिए और फिर बिजनेस वीजा के लिए। इस तरह भतीजे और चचेरे भाई ने इतनी बड़ी वारदात को अंजाम दिया। यह भी दावा किया गया है कि…

[roseband]

...

[insightfultravel]

Common Schengen Visa Scam: How to Stay Safe in Europe 2025.

Planning a dream vacation to Europe can quickly turn into a nightmare if you fall victim to a Schengen visa scam. Visa applications in the Philippines have surged post-pandemic. Anxious travelers are increasingly being targeted by fraudulent schemes promising expedited approvals or guaranteed appointments. Don’t let your eagerness to explore the beauty of Europe blind you to the risks of visa…

[avandelay20]

"

The NOM (net overseas migration) numbers are dominated by temporary arrivals, of which international students are the most conspicuous group. Our permanent migration program is only a fraction of this number.

While temporary skilled visas and other visas help fill gaps in our labour market, there are no caps on the numbers of these visas.

The Senate is due to review placing caps next week, amid universities screaming about the impact it will have on their finances and warnings of what it will do the broader economy.

Peter Dutton has referred to international students as the "modern version of boat arrivals", yet his party has also been critical of proposals to cap foreign student numbers, arguing it would hurt regional and smaller universities.

This Labor government is hoping the caps will lower NOM from 520,000 in 2022-23 to 395,000 in the financial year just finished and 260,000 in the current financial year.

However, immigration experts say the 2023-24 forecast has been "clearly missed by a long way" and the government is "highly likely to miss" the current year forecast "by a very long way".

The Coalition would like to cut the permanent migration program to 160,000 and reduce "excessive numbers of foreign students studying at metropolitan universities" by setting a cap on foreign student numbers - reducing the overall NOM by about 25% percent.

But the Coalition has given little detail about how it would actually cut the NOM.

"

--

The Australian university ponzi schemers can go fuck themselves.

Solving this HOUSING CRISIS requires addressing the DEMAND side of the equation first. Reducing DEMAND is something we can do TODAY with the stroke of a pen. Solving the SUPPLY side of the housing crisis will take years if not decades to solve.

We cannot live with this housing crisis for another year let alone another decade.

Australia must cap the total number of temporary visas and swap about 50% of any remaining student visas in that cap to go towards tradies who can build houses.

Face facts Australia: Students don't build houses, they only contribute to demand side of this crisis.

We don't need more students, we need tradies in place of students!

Current and prior governments have said "we need more tradies" yet have continued to allow a massive influx of students at astronomical levels contributing to excessive demand chasing limited supply in housing.

Pull your head in Australia.

[scamsupdateindia]

(via Himansh Verma Fraud: Unveiling the Massive Visa Scam)

[synergisticitusa]

OPT VISA Scams - How OPT Students should avoid Scams | SynergisticIT

Discover how OPT students can safeguard themselves against visa scams with our comprehensive guide. Learn the common pitfalls to avoid, crucial tips for identifying legitimate opportunities, and practical strategies for protecting your OPT status. Stay informed, stay secure, and pursue your career goals confidently with Synergistic IT's expert advice.

Blog: https://www.synergisticit.com/opt-visa-scams-how-opt-students-should-avoid-scams/

[mostlysignssomeportents]

How I got scammed

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/05/cyber-dunning-kruger/#swiss-cheese-security

I wuz robbed.

More specifically, I was tricked by a phone-phisher pretending to be from my bank, and he convinced me to hand over my credit-card number, then did $8,000+ worth of fraud with it before I figured out what happened. And then he tried to do it again, a week later!

Here's what happened. Over the Christmas holiday, I traveled to New Orleans. The day we landed, I hit a Chase ATM in the French Quarter for some cash, but the machine declined the transaction. Later in the day, we passed a little credit-union's ATM and I used that one instead (I bank with a one-branch credit union and generally there's no fee to use another CU's ATM).

A couple days later, I got a call from my credit union. It was a weekend, during the holiday, and the guy who called was obviously working for my little CU's after-hours fraud contractor. I'd dealt with these folks before – they service a ton of little credit unions, and generally the call quality isn't great and the staff will often make mistakes like mispronouncing my credit union's name.

That's what happened here – the guy was on a terrible VOIP line and I had to ask him to readjust his mic before I could even understand him. He mispronounced my bank's name and then asked if I'd attempted to spend $1,000 at an Apple Store in NYC that day. No, I said, and groaned inwardly. What a pain in the ass. Obviously, I'd had my ATM card skimmed – either at the Chase ATM (maybe that was why the transaction failed), or at the other credit union's ATM (it had been a very cheap looking system).

I told the guy to block my card and we started going through the tedious business of running through recent transactions, verifying my identity, and so on. It dragged on and on. These were my last hours in New Orleans, and I'd left my family at home and gone out to see some of the pre-Mardi Gras krewe celebrations and get a muffalata, and I could tell that I was going to run out of time before I finished talking to this guy.

"Look," I said, "you've got all my details, you've frozen the card. I gotta go home and meet my family and head to the airport. I'll call you back on the after-hours number once I'm through security, all right?"

He was frustrated, but that was his problem. I hung up, got my sandwich, went to the airport, and we checked in. It was total chaos: an Alaska Air 737 Max had just lost its door-plug in mid-air and every Max in every airline's fleet had been grounded, so the check in was crammed with people trying to rebook. We got through to the gate and I sat down to call the CU's after-hours line. The person on the other end told me that she could only handle lost and stolen cards, not fraud, and given that I'd already frozen the card, I should just drop by the branch on Monday to get a new card.

We flew home, and later the next day, I logged into my account and made a list of all the fraudulent transactions and printed them out, and on Monday morning, I drove to the bank to deal with all the paperwork. The folks at the CU were even more pissed than I was. The fraud that run up to more than $8,000, and if Visa refused to take it out of the merchants where the card had been used, my little credit union would have to eat the loss.

I agreed and commiserated. I also pointed out that their outsource, after-hours fraud center bore some blame here: I'd canceled the card on Saturday but most of the fraud had taken place on Sunday. Something had gone wrong.

One cool thing about banking at a tiny credit-union is that you end up talking to people who have actual authority, responsibility and agency. It turned out the the woman who was processing my fraud paperwork was a VP, and she decided to look into it. A few minutes later she came back and told me that the fraud center had no record of having called me on Saturday.

"That was the fraudster," she said.

Oh, shit. I frantically rewound my conversation, trying to figure out if this could possibly be true. I hadn't given him anything apart from some very anodyne info, like what city I live in (which is in my Wikipedia entry), my date of birth (ditto), and the last four digits of my card.

Wait a sec.

He hadn't asked for the last four digits. He'd asked for the last seven digits. At the time, I'd found that very frustrating, but now – "The first nine digits are the same for every card you issue, right?" I asked the VP.

I'd given him my entire card number.

Goddammit.

The thing is, I know a lot about fraud. I'm writing an entire series of novels about this kind of scam:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

And most summers, I go to Defcon, and I always go to the "social engineering" competitions where an audience listens as a hacker in a soundproof booth cold-calls merchants (with the owner's permission) and tries to con whoever answers the phone into giving up important information.

But I'd been conned.

Now look, I knew I could be conned. I'd been conned before, 13 years ago, by a Twitter worm that successfully phished out of my password via DM:

https://locusmag.com/2010/05/cory-doctorow-persistence-pays-parasites/

That scam had required a miracle of timing. It started the day before, when I'd reset my phone to factory defaults and reinstalled all my apps. That same day, I'd published two big online features that a lot of people were talking about. The next morning, we were late getting out of the house, so by the time my wife and I dropped the kid at daycare and went to the coffee shop, it had a long line. Rather than wait in line with me, my wife sat down to read a newspaper, and so I pulled out my phone and found a Twitter DM from a friend asking "is this you?" with a URL.

Assuming this was something to do with those articles I'd published the day before, I clicked the link and got prompted for my Twitter login again. This had been happening all day because I'd done that mobile reinstall the day before and all my stored passwords had been wiped. I entered it but the page timed out. By that time, the coffees were ready. We sat and chatted for a bit, then went our own ways.

I was on my way to the office when I checked my phone again. I had a whole string of DMs from other friends. Each one read "is this you?" and had a URL.

Oh, shit, I'd been phished.

If I hadn't reinstalled my mobile OS the day before. If I hadn't published a pair of big articles the day before. If we hadn't been late getting out the door. If we had been a little more late getting out the door (so that I'd have seen the multiple DMs, which would have tipped me off).

There's a name for this in security circles: "Swiss-cheese security." Imagine multiple slices of Swiss cheese all stacked up, the holes in one slice blocked by the slice below it. All the slices move around and every now and again, a hole opens up that goes all the way through the stack. Zap!

The fraudster who tricked me out of my credit card number had Swiss cheese security on his side. Yes, he spoofed my bank's caller ID, but that wouldn't have been enough to fool me if I hadn't been on vacation, having just used a pair of dodgy ATMs, in a hurry and distracted. If the 737 Max disaster hadn't happened that day and I'd had more time at the gate, I'd have called my bank back. If my bank didn't use a slightly crappy outsource/out-of-hours fraud center that I'd already had sub-par experiences with. If, if, if.

The next Friday night, at 5:30PM, the fraudster called me back, pretending to be the bank's after-hours center. He told me my card had been compromised again. But: I hadn't removed my card from my wallet since I'd had it replaced. Also, it was half an hour after the bank closed for the long weekend, a very fraud-friendly time. And when I told him I'd call him back and asked for the after-hours fraud number, he got very threatening and warned me that because I'd now been notified about the fraud that any losses the bank suffered after I hung up the phone without completing the fraud protocol would be billed to me. I hung up on him. He called me back immediately. I hung up on him again and put my phone into do-not-disturb.

The following Tuesday, I called my bank and spoke to their head of risk-management. I went through everything I'd figured out about the fraudsters, and she told me that credit unions across America were being hit by this scam, by fraudsters who somehow knew CU customers' phone numbers and names, and which CU they banked at. This was key: my phone number is a reasonably well-kept secret. You can get it by spending money with Equifax or another nonconsensual doxing giant, but you can't just google it or get it at any of the free services. The fact that the fraudsters knew where I banked, knew my name, and had my phone number had really caused me to let down my guard.

The risk management person and I talked about how the credit union could mitigate this attack: for example, by better-training the after-hours card-loss staff to be on the alert for calls from people who had been contacted about supposed card fraud. We also went through the confusing phone-menu that had funneled me to the wrong department when I called in, and worked through alternate wording for the menu system that would be clearer (this is the best part about banking with a small CU – you can talk directly to the responsible person and have a productive discussion!). I even convinced her to buy a ticket to next summer's Defcon to attend the social engineering competitions.

There's a leak somewhere in the CU systems' supply chain. Maybe it's Zelle, or the small number of corresponding banks that CUs rely on for SWIFT transaction forwarding. Maybe it's even those after-hours fraud/card-loss centers. But all across the USA, CU customers are getting calls with spoofed caller IDs from fraudsters who know their registered phone numbers and where they bank.

I've been mulling this over for most of a month now, and one thing has really been eating at me: the way that AI is going to make this kind of problem much worse.

Not because AI is going to commit fraud, though.

One of the truest things I know about AI is: "we're nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we're certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job":

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/15/passive-income-brainworms/#four-hour-work-week

I trusted this fraudster specifically because I knew that the outsource, out-of-hours contractors my bank uses have crummy headsets, don't know how to pronounce my bank's name, and have long-ass, tedious, and pointless standardized questionnaires they run through when taking fraud reports. All of this created cover for the fraudster, whose plausibility was enhanced by the rough edges in his pitch - they didn't raise red flags.

As this kind of fraud reporting and fraud contacting is increasingly outsourced to AI, bank customers will be conditioned to dealing with semi-automated systems that make stupid mistakes, force you to repeat yourself, ask you questions they should already know the answers to, and so on. In other words, AI will groom bank customers to be phishing victims.

This is a mistake the finance sector keeps making. 15 years ago, Ben Laurie excoriated the UK banks for their "Verified By Visa" system, which validated credit card transactions by taking users to a third party site and requiring them to re-enter parts of their password there:

https://web.archive.org/web/20090331094020/http://www.links.org/?p=591

This is exactly how a phishing attack works. As Laurie pointed out, this was the banks training their customers to be phished.

I came close to getting phished again today, as it happens. I got back from Berlin on Friday and my suitcase was damaged in transit. I've been dealing with the airline, which means I've really been dealing with their third-party, outsource luggage-damage service. They have a terrible website, their emails are incoherent, and they officiously demand the same information over and over again.

This morning, I got a scam email asking me for more information to complete my damaged luggage claim. It was a terrible email, from a noreply@ email address, and it was vague, officious, and dishearteningly bureaucratic. For just a moment, my finger hovered over the phishing link, and then I looked a little closer.

On any other day, it wouldn't have had a chance. Today – right after I had my luggage wrecked, while I'm still jetlagged, and after days of dealing with my airline's terrible outsource partner – it almost worked.

So much fraud is a Swiss-cheese attack, and while companies can't close all the holes, they can stop creating new ones.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to post about it whenever I get scammed. I find the inner workings of scams to be fascinating, and it's also important to remind people that everyone is vulnerable sometimes, and scammers are willing to try endless variations until an attack lands at just the right place, at just the right time, in just the right way. If you think you can't get scammed, that makes you especially vulnerable:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/24/passive-income/#swiss-cheese-security

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[amitkakkareasyvisa]

Avoid Getting Scammed On Your Travels Abroad Tips By Amit Kakkar Easy Visa