We are a consultancy telling you how to check consultancies, which you should read with exactly as much suspicion as that deserves. Check us against this list too. If we fail any of it, walk.
The reason we are writing it is that the court reporting has become impossible to ignore. The Business Standard has covered a Tk15.5 crore overseas-study scam that ended with a consultancy owner and two others arrested. Dhaka Tribune reported four people remanded over a Tk20 crore study-abroad fraud. In another case four were remanded over a Tk8.39 crore student visa scam, and victims attacked the suspects outside the courtroom. BSB Global Network's chairman was remanded and then sent to jail over an education scam running to roughly Tk18 crore. One more consultancy owner was picked up at the airport trying to leave the country.
That is not one rotten operator. That is a pattern, and the people paying for it are families who sold land.
The mechanics of the con
Most of these follow the same shape. A student pays a large sum up front for a package. Admission, visa, ticket, sometimes a job on arrival. The money goes in, the updates get vaguer, the intake slips by one semester, then another. Eventually the office stops answering.
By the time anyone goes to the police, the money has moved and the student has lost a year as well as the cash.
The promises that pull people in are always the same three. A guaranteed visa. A job waiting for you. A university nobody can quite verify.
Nobody can guarantee you a visa
This is the clearest line in the whole business. A visa is a decision made by a foreign government's immigration officer. No agency in Dhaka or Chattogram has any influence over that decision, and anyone who says otherwise is either lying or planning to disappear.
What an honest consultancy can tell you is how strong your file looks and what usually happens to files like yours. That is a probability, not a promise, and we should say so in those words.
If someone offers a guarantee, stop there. Not "be careful". Stop.
Questions that get you a straight answer or a scramble
Ask which specific university and which specific course, and ask to see the offer letter pathway in writing before you pay anything. Vague answers about "partner universities in Europe" are a warning on their own.
Ask whether you can pay the university directly. Tuition should move from you to the institution, usually through a student file at your bank. An agency that insists all tuition must go through their own account is asking you to hand over your leverage. Some legitimate arrangements do involve agency-collected deposits, so this alone is not proof of fraud, but it deserves a hard question and a written receipt.
Ask what happens to your money if the visa is refused. Get the refund policy in writing, with the specific amounts and the conditions. "We will adjust it for the next intake" is not a refund policy.
Ask to speak to two students they placed last year. Not testimonials on a wall. Actual people you can call.
Ask to see their trade licence and their office. Firms that exist only on Facebook and meet you in a coffee shop are a category of risk by themselves.
Verify the university yourself, in ten minutes
This is the step almost nobody does, and it catches most of the fakes.
Find the university's own website, not a link the agency sent you. Search the name plus "international admissions" and go to the official domain. Check that the course you were promised actually exists, check the intake months, and find the admissions email on that site. Write to them and ask whether your agency is a recognised representative.
Universities answer this question. It is free, and the reply is the difference between a degree and a lost year.
Also check whether the country's own regulator lists the institution. The UK has a register of licensed student sponsors, Australia publishes CRICOS, Canada lists designated learning institutions. If the place you have been sold is not on the relevant list, the visa was never going to happen.
What we will and will not do
We will tell you when your grades or your budget do not match the country you have your heart set on. We will tell you a file is weak. We would rather lose the fee than put a student through a refusal.
We will not guarantee a visa, promise you a job abroad, or ask you to pay a university's tuition into a personal account.
If you are sitting with an offer from another agency and something feels off, bring the paperwork to us and we will read it with you. No charge, and no obligation to sign anything with us afterwards. We would rather you go abroad with someone else than lose your family's savings to a firm that vanishes.
One last thing
Scams change shape. The examples above are the ones that reached court, which means they are the ones that got caught, and the reporting keeps coming. Before you transfer money to anybody, message us on WhatsApp and we will help you check. It costs you nothing and it takes about a minute.