Job Discussion Forums

[gastropod]

Just a warning to anyone who might receive a job offer from a man claiming to be a Ukranian executive chef living in London and looking for an ESL tutor for his wife and daughter. He offers an extremely generous package. He has gone to a lot of trouble to make everything seem legit and even sends you a nice family photo. This man says that he will sponsor you and claims to have made prior arrangements with the UK Border Authority for processing your documents. He sends you a contract to sign (looks legit) and asks you to scan it and send it to an email address which he claims is that of a UKBA officer. He says that the officer will contact you again shortly and instruct you on what to do next. Although sceptical, I thought up to this stage that it could still be legit so I went along with it. Anyway I duly received a reply from the alleged UKBA officer. (I should mention here that the UKBA requires migrant workers arriving in the UK to have at least 800 pounds with them on arrival to cover initial living costs.) There was a lot of detail in the email about what the sponsor would pay for but the rub was that I had to send 800 pounds to the UK by Western Union - not in my own name but in the name of a close relative - and that I should make the money payable to myself. This is definitely not standard UKBA procedure. The alleged officer also requested scans of the photo page of my passport and the receipt from Western Union. There was no official footer script on the email like you usually get with govt. dept. emails and there were a few grammatical slips in the text. The email address also lacked the usual govt. coding. That was when I woke up to what was going on. I don't know how they get the money out of Western Union but I guess they get enough information about you (including your signature from the employment contract) to withdraw your money somehow. Having done a web search on this man I find that he has posted the same job offer on a number of web pages. Don't become a victim!

[spiral78]

This one's been around a while.
The first clue should be: why recruit from abroad when allegedly living in an Anglophone country?

[gastropod]

[gastropod]