Public interest warning
Published 8 September 2026 Last updated 8 September 2026 Reading time 6 minutes
If Owusu Antiedu i.e wfmuk1 asks you to pay for a UK job or for a Certificate of Sponsorship, it is a scam. Charging a work-seeker a fee to find them work is illegal in the UK. Employers are banned from passing sponsorship costs on to the worker. No legitimate route requires you to pay a recruiter thousands of pounds.
Every year, people hoping to work in the UK are asked to hand over thousands of pounds for a job that does not exist. The money goes to a personal bank account. The job never materialises. The recruiter stops replying.
This page explains how that scam works, the three facts that let you shut it down in one message, and how to check any offer in about ten minutes using free public records.
The approach is consistent enough that once you have seen it, you will recognise it immediately.
First contact comes through social media. Snapchat, WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram or Facebook. Not a company email address, not a recruitment website, not LinkedIn with a verifiable employment history. The account often looks like an individual offering a personal favour rather than a business.
There are usually two price tiers. A small fee, often somewhere between £50 and £100, for a low-paid or minimum-wage job. A much larger sum, commonly £4,000 to £7,000, for anything described as coming with visa sponsorship. The small tier exists to build trust and to make the operation look real. Some people do get put in touch with an actual low-paid job, which then makes the expensive offer seem credible.
You are sent a contract. It looks formal. Often it explicitly links your payment to the provision of employment and a Certificate of Sponsorship. That wording is not a sign of legitimacy. It is the opposite, because that arrangement is not lawful in the first place.
Payment goes to a personal account. Sometimes to a name that does not match the recruiter or the company. You may be asked to pay a third person entirely, described as an assistant, a partner or an accountant.
Then the deadline appears. The slot is closing. The employer needs an answer today. Another applicant is waiting. Once you have paid, there is often one more fee, needed to release the visa, the sponsorship, the paperwork, or your refund.
You are not the first, and paying more will not recover what has gone. Skip to what to do if you have already paid. If you sent the money by UK bank transfer, there is a reimbursement route with a legal deadline attached, so time matters.
You do not need to argue or investigate. Any one of these is enough on its own.
Under section 6 of the Employment Agencies Act 1973, an employment agency must not charge a work-seeker a fee for finding them work. There are narrow exceptions for entertainment and modelling. Nothing else. No court finding is needed for this. It is simply prohibited.
Since 31 December 2024, Home Office sponsor guidance prohibits an employer from passing the sponsor licence cost, the fee for assigning your Certificate of Sponsorship, or the Immigration Skills Charge on to the worker. A sponsor that does so will normally have its licence revoked.
It is a digital record held in the Home Office system. What you receive is a reference number: 11 characters, beginning with the letter C followed by ten digits. If someone sends you a PDF or a printed certificate, it is not a Certificate of Sponsorship. No genuine one exists in that form.
Fact three is the most useful in practice, because it is the one scammers cannot work around. They can produce a convincing-looking document. They cannot produce a real record in a Home Office system they have no access to.
All of this is free and public. Do it before you send anyone money, and do it in this order, because step one settles most cases on its own.
The Home Office publishes the full list of every organisation licensed to sponsor workers, free, on GOV.UK. If the employer is not on that register, they cannot sponsor you. Not "not yet", not "the application is being processed". They cannot. Stop here.
Also free. Check the incorporation date, the registered address, the directors and whether accounts have ever been filed. A company registered a few months ago, with no accounts, at a residential or mail-forwarding address, is not employing skilled workers at scale.
A real CoS reference is 11 characters: the letter C followed by ten digits, so it looks like C1234567890. Anything with extra letters, a different length, or arriving as an attached certificate is not genuine. The right format does not prove it is real, but the wrong format proves it is not.
Find their number on their own website or on the sponsor register, never a number the recruiter gives you. Ask HR to confirm the vacancy, the recruiter and the CoS. A real employer will confirm it in a minute. A recruiter who tries to stop you doing this has told you everything.
Skilled Worker roles have minimum salary thresholds and occupation-specific going rates published by the Home Office. An offer well below the going rate for the job title could not be sponsored even if everything else were genuine.
Treat any one of these as a reason to stop and verify. Several together mean walk away.
Confusion about this is what the scam runs on. Some immigration costs are genuinely yours. The sponsorship costs are not, and cannot be made yours by a contract.
| Cost | Who pays it | Can it be charged to you? |
|---|---|---|
| Sponsor licence application | The employer | No. Prohibited since 31 Dec 2024 |
| Assigning your Certificate of Sponsorship | The employer | No. Prohibited since 31 Dec 2024 |
| Immigration Skills Charge | The employer | No. Prohibited since 31 Dec 2024 |
| A recruiter's placement or introduction fee | Nobody, from you | No. Illegal to charge a work-seeker |
| Your visa application fee | Usually you | Yes, this one is legitimately yours |
| Immigration Health Surcharge | Usually you | Yes |
| Your travel and relocation | You, unless agreed otherwise | Yes |
You pay the Home Office directly for the fees in the bottom three rows, through official channels, never to a recruiter in cash or by transfer to a personal account.
If you paid by UK bank transfer, contact your bank now and use the words "authorised push payment fraud". Since 7 October 2024, UK payment firms must reimburse victims of this type of fraud, up to £85,000, for payments made through Faster Payments or CHAPS.
You need to report it within 13 months of the payment. Once you claim, the firm must reimburse within 5 business days, or up to 35 if it needs to investigate. A £100 excess may apply. Reimbursement can be refused if you were grossly negligent, so give them everything you have and be straightforward about what happened.
Then, in this order:
This generates a crime reference number, which your bank will usually ask for. Do it even if you have already spoken to your bank.
Screenshot the whole conversation, including the profile name and handle, dates and any deleted-message notices. Save the contract, the job advert, the payment confirmations and the account details you paid. Export rather than screenshot where the app allows it. Do not edit anything.
Charging a work-seeker for finding work is an offence they enforce, and they can investigate and prosecute. Give them the account details, the contract and the amounts.
Selling a Certificate of Sponsorship is exactly what the immigration crime reporting route exists for, and it is acted on, because it can cost a real sponsor its licence.
Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook all have fraud reporting routes. This is where naming the specific account belongs, and it is the fastest way to stop the same account reaching the next person.
First call. Say "authorised push payment fraud". 13 month deadline from the payment date.
The UK's national fraud reporting centre. Gives you a crime reference number.actionfraud.police.uk
Enforces the ban on charging work-seekers fees.[email protected]0345 161 6000
For the sale of a Certificate of Sponsorship or fake sponsorship claims.gov.uk/report-immigration-crime
Report the account for fraud. Include the handle and screenshots.
If a real company was used as cover, tell them. They will want to know, and they can act.