23-07-2025
Meet the UK's Visa Scam Vigilante
When a staffing crisis during the pandemic forced the UK to open its immigration system to foreign social care workers, thousands of trained staff in developing countries saw an opportunity to relocate and perhaps make a better life. Five years later, many instead have found themselves still in their home country with their savings gone.
On this episode of Bloomberg Investigates, we meet a few of the victims of an insidious scam that's relieved care workers of untold thousands of dollars. We meet Tadiwa, a young man from Zimbabwe whose family scraped together everything they had to secure him a job in the UK. But the documents a business agent promised him, which would have allowed him to apply for a visa, never arrived. Sheila, who wanted to move from Harare to the UK with her daughters, gave most of her savings to the same agent, and received nothing in return. To get by, she's had to sell bricks she bought to build her house and even her refrigerator.
