Overseas job scams for Bangladeshi workers: verify an agency

Many Bangladeshis look for work abroad through recruiting agencies, and that is a legal route. The danger is the people who copy it: agents who take your money and disappear, or who send you abroad on the wrong visa. This is a checklist to use before you pay anyone.

The common scams

• Visit visa sold as a work visa. You arrive abroad and discover you have no permission to work.
• Fake job offer and employer. The company or the demand letter does not exist.
• Fees without receipts. Money taken in cash, with no receipt, and no written breakdown.
• Extra payments abroad. Once you have travelled, new "fees" appear and your passport is held.
• Fake agencies on Facebook and Telegram. A page with a licence number copied from a real agency.

Red flags

• The agent cannot show a licence, or the licence belongs to someone else.
• Cash only, no receipt, or payment to a personal number.
• No written contract, or a contract in a language you cannot read.
• The offer promises a salary far above what the job usually pays.
• You are told to travel on a visit or tourist visa "and sort the work permit there".

Checks before you pay

1. Verify the agency's licence with the Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) through its official channels, and check the agency name and licence number match.
2. Check the registration steps that BMET requires of workers before leaving, and complete them in your own name.
3. Check the visa type. It must be a work visa for the job you were promised, and you can confirm the rules with the destination country's official immigration or embassy page.
4. Verify the employer and the demand letter through the embassy or the employer's official contact, not through the agent.
5. Ask for a written contract with the job, salary, hours, accommodation and who pays travel. Read it before you pay.
6. Ask what the agency is allowed to charge and get every payment as a receipt. Bangladesh sets rules on recruitment costs, so check the current rule on an official source.
7. Keep your passport and original certificates with you until the visa is issued, and never hand originals over as security.

If something goes wrong

• Keep every message, receipt, contract and visa copy.
• Complain to BMET and to the police; if you are already abroad, contact the Bangladesh mission there.
• Warn others by reporting the page or number to the platform.

For the online side, such as fake job ads and recruiter messages that ask for documents or to run code, see Fake job offers and recruitment fraud.

Takeaway: a licence is not enough, so check it at the source. Pay only against receipts, insist on a written contract and a work visa, and never give up your passport.