Visa agent scams in Pakistan follow a pattern you can recognise before the last transfer. You pay in pieces: token, medical, “embassy”, insurance, then a last demand the week you were supposed to fly. The visa never becomes visible on an official website. Apna Ghar will not guess how much a scammer typically takes. The amount is whatever you sent, and the proof is the receipt, not a round number in a warning poster. The defence is the same in every city: check the Overseas Employment Promoter licence on beoe.gov.pk, check the Gulf visa on that country’s official screen, and do not pay the next piece while either check fails.
Warning signs
- No licence on the Bureau of Emigration list. Check how to look up an OEP before the first token, not after the third.
- Pressure to pay today because a quota closes, a Ramadan offer ends, or the embassy officer is “only in the office until 4”.
- Receipts that are blank, in a different name from the shop sign, or handwritten without the business name you searched.
- Your original passport held for weeks, with a new reason each Friday.
- A visa file you cannot see on ICP, GDRFA, a Saudi enquiry, or the Ministry of Interior site for the country they named.
- A medical sold as a GAMCA package at a rupee total you cannot see on wafid.com. Book the slip yourself. See the medical guide.
- A request for your wife’s or mother’s documents for a job that was advertised as a single man’s visa.
- A second agent who offers to recover the first agent’s fee for a new fee.
What evidence to keep
Cases fail when the only record is a memory. Keep a folder, on paper and on your phone, and do not edit the files later. You want the original chat, not a retelling. Photograph the shop front, the sign, and any licence they have framed. Save the receipt and, if you transferred money, the account title, the account number, the bank or wallet name, and the date. Save the offer letter and any visa PDF. Save the CNIC copy they took if you still have it, and write down every document you handed over. If they recorded a voice note, keep the audio. Write a one-page timeline: date, amount, what they promised would happen next, and what actually happened. Names matter. “The boy at the counter” is harder to use than a name and a phone number.
Send one written request for your passport and your originals, and keep the reply, including silence. Do not send more money while you wait for that reply. Do not hand the originals to a new helper. If other people were in the same shop on the same day, their stories can support yours, but your own receipts are the spine of the complaint. A group chat full of anger is not a case file.
Where to complain
Use the Federal Investigation Agency for criminal deception, including online payments. Start from fia.gov.pk and use only the contact or form that site publishes. Copycat complaint pages exist. Use the Bureau of Emigration and Overseas Employment at beoe.gov.pk when the person acted as a promoter or claimed a promoter licence. The steps and the limits are written out in how to report visa fraud. A local police report is sometimes needed as well. Ask the FIA desk what they want in your city rather than guessing. Neither office can promise the money back. Say that to your family before they ask.
A licensed promoter who delivered a different job from the one in the agreement is still a Bureau complaint. A person with no licence who took a visa fee is an FIA complaint. Many cases are both. File both if both are true, and do not wait to see which one feels friendlier. If you are already in the Gulf on a bad visa, speak to the Pakistani mission and, for labour issues, the host ministry. MOHRE in the UAE and the Ministry of Human Resources in Saudi Arabia are the labour doors. They cannot undo a transfer you made to a shop in Gujranwala. That undo, if it ever happens, is a Pakistan matter.
Fees, fines and salary thresholds change. If a number is not written on the official page linked below, treat a WhatsApp figure as unchecked.