Australia Visa Services—How To Keep Fraudsters Away?

These days, many Indian citizens are keenly interested in Australia Visa. Whether the visa is related to short trip related to pleasure, visiting friends and family members or it’s a working visa or PR visa for Australia, there is a surge in the number of visa applications for Australia, and especially from India.

The main reason for this surge could be due to the numerous opportunities which are offered by growing economy of Oz. But that is just the positive side. Now let’s share the negative side too and that is related to visa scammers. Yes, you just read it right, visa scams related to the Australian visa! This can really turn your Australian dream to a nightmare.

SCAMwatch and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) at the moment are leaving no stone upturned in issuing the warning to the visa applicants, especially those visa candidates who wish to apply for the Australian Visa. The ScamWatch and DIBP are reportedly requesting the visa applicants to be little cautious. They need to be alert against especially those visa agents offering ‘guaranteed’ Australian Visas, in return for money.

Recently there was a scam that came to notice and it was regarding visa offer made to people. The visa offer was related to Australia. In the scam, the scammers were approaching people by e-mail, or even by phone. They were making offers regarding Australian Visa in return for payments which according to people they were charging as their fees.

These visa scammers may also try to trick you by making you believing in them. For this, they may claim that they are genuine; they might also try to pose as some kind of staff members belonging to the Australian embassy. They might even claim that they have a strong and deep connection with Government officials and u will help you in acceptance of your visa. They may even provide you with websites that may appear like official Government sites.

Certain other scams which came into notice of ScamWatch and DIBP were where the scammers were trying to trick visa applicants by acting as legal and registered migration agents, and by running fake advisor services. In reality there were not only illegal and but also not registered anywhere.

Warning Signs

Here are some warning signs if in case you are also approached by the consultants!

• The visa scammers may just approach you out of the blue and offer you a ‘guaranteed’ Australian visa.
• You may receive an offer from visa scammers through an e-mail or even on the phone or from a website.
• The visa scammers may approach you by offering you a lifetime opportunity which you may not get again. They may also claim the opportunity in your hand as the only chance to travel or migrate to Down Under.
• They may ask to pay some amount of fee which might be an upfront fee in order to register or initiate you visa process. The money asked from you as a fee might be a big or a smaller amount.
• The fraudsters may ask you to pay them directly instead of making your payment on the official government website. They might claim the website is down or there is a server error or they might even say that at present the official website is not accepting any payments.
• In an attempt to win your trust, they might even say and try to prove their strong contacts with the immigration officials and may also try to win you over by saying that they can make the entire citizenship process extremely easy for you.

So what you should do when you receive such call?

In the event when you are approached the visa scammer by phone or e-mail, especially if you had not applied for visa,
Hang up the phone immediately and ignore future calls from that number.

In case you are a current visa applicant and waiting for the result of you application, and you are approached by someone who claims to be speaking about you visa please, report and share that number or e-mail with the Australian embassy.

For more information on the Australia PR Visa please contact me at [email protected].