Web of woes! Beware of con visa sites

Some expats who are failing to obtain family visas are falling into the hands of unscrupulous elements in the Kingdom and becoming victims to swindlers who operate a fake website.

The recent increase in advertisements offering visa services in Kingdom has become fertile ground for tricksters who want to profit from expatriates’ woes. From Rabigh in the Western province to Jubail in the Eastern province, several advertisements have popped up on expatriate websites, offering family visa “services”.

Sources said the swindlers are closely monitoring expat applicants who were turned down at official recruitment offices.

The criminals target these expats and offer them to facilitate family visas within 48 hours, assuring them that they can pay only after being handed over the supposed “official visa” paper, while being able to check the visa issuance at the purported ministry website, according to the victims’ statements.

“I applied for a family visa but my application was rejected. As I was coming out from the recruitment office some people approached me and assured they would facilitate the issuance of a visa for me,” said Mohammed Elyas Hussain.

He added that he had to pay “SR6,500 as service charges after seeing the issued visa on this website which I could easily find in Google.”

Hussain added that the swindlers showed him the alleged online visa website on their mobile in order to make him believe their story.

Officials are warning that the official, authentic website for online visa services has this URL address HYPERLINK “https://visa.mofa.gov. sa/“https://visa.mofa.gov.sa, other websites with the same headline also exist in the web, but they are followed by more text: HYPERLINK “http://www.wvw.cc/visamofagovsa/ Searchvisaon.html” \n _blankwww. w v w. c c / v i s a m o f a g o v s a / Searchvisaon.html,

The impostors are using popular search engines such as Google to locate this fake website in order to make it appear more official and believable, which is the reason why most of the victims are falling in their trap.

Officials exhort the public and expats to verify that Saudi government websites end with the domain name of HYPERLINK “http://gov. sa/” \n _blankgov.sa.

There are some postings are available in web forums, popular among expats in the Kingdom, where the impostors are openly offering family and visit visa services to expats at “reasonable cost.”