Most electronic visa fraud follows five patterns: lookalike sites posing as the official portal, form-filling services charging several times the consular fee, phishing messages that harvest passport and card details, upsells promising faster processing or guaranteed approval, and follow-up fraud after the visa has already been issued. For each one below: how it works, how to recognise it, and what to do if you have already handed over money or documents.
Scam 1: Lookalike sites posing as the official portal
How it works. Someone registers a domain built from official-sounding words: the destination country, “gov”, “official”, “e-visa”, “application centre”. The page copies the government portal’s layout, crest and wording, and search ads place it above the real portal, so travelers land on the copy first.
How to spot it. Start with the address bar. Government portals sit on the country’s own domain (.gov, .gouv.fr, .gov.uk or the national equivalent), and a padlock only proves the connection is encrypted, since fraudulent sites buy certificates too. Paid results carry a “Sponsored” label. Countdown timers, and a payment page whose merchant name has nothing to do with the site, are both worth stopping for.
What to do. Leave, and reach the portal by typing the government address yourself or following a link from the destination’s embassy site. If you already submitted the form, treat your passport details as copied and use the recovery steps below.
Scam 2: Markup mills charging multiples of the consular fee
How it works. These sites do submit a real application, so the visa usually arrives, which is why they survive. The fraud is in the pricing: one total, no breakdown, and a $25 consular fee billed at $115. The $90 difference is a service fee that is never named as one.
How to spot it. A single figure with no itemisation. A price that appears only after you have entered passport data. Wording such as “all government fees included” with no amount attached. No company name, registered address or refund terms anywhere on the site.
What to do. Look up the consular fee before you pay. The government portal publishes it, and our requirements checker shows the fee and the documents for your passport and route. Any service fee on top is then a number you can judge.
Scam 3: Phishing for passport data and payment details
How it works. An email or text arrives that appears to come from the portal you used: your application needs extra documents, your payment did not clear, your authorisation is about to be cancelled. The link opens a copy of the form, and whatever you type goes to the sender. Some arrive before you have applied anywhere.
How to spot it. Immigration authorities do not ask for card numbers by email, and they do not ask you to re-upload a passport scan through a link. Check the sender’s full address, and hover over links to see where they lead. Urgency is the standard lever, so a deadline measured in hours is a reason to slow down.
What to do. Do not click. Open the portal from your own bookmark or by typing the address, then check your status with your reference number. If it claimed to come from a service you did use, forward it to their support team.
Scam 4: Fake expedited processing and approval guarantees
How it works. Once you have paid, an upsell or a phone call offers priority handling, a direct line to a case officer, or a guaranteed approval for an extra fee. None of that exists: approval is a government decision, and no intermediary has a queue-jumping channel into it.
How to spot it. Any guarantee of approval is false by definition, and so is a processing time faster than the one the government publishes. Where a genuine expedited tier exists, the government sells it on its own site.
What to do. Read the published processing time and apply early enough that speed is not worth buying. Decline the upsell. Our guide on how to apply for an electronic visa sets out the normal sequence, so an invented extra step stands out.
Scam 5: Post-approval fraud, fake renewals and activation fees
How it works. The message arrives after your visa is issued, which makes the timing plausible: your authorisation needs activating, a validation fee is outstanding, your permit expires next week and can be renewed here. Fake refund offers work the same way, asking for card details to send money back to you.
How to spot it. Electronic visas and travel authorisations do not need activating, and no legitimate refund requires you to type a card number into a form someone sent you. Renewal reminders that land long before your expiry date are a common signal; the real rules are in our guide to when an electronic visa expires and how to renew it.
What to do. Check your status on the government’s own checker using the reference number from your approval. If the record is valid, ignore the message and report it.
Checking that a portal is genuine
Two checks catch nearly all of the above: confirm the domain belongs to the government or to a company you can identify, and confirm the fee against the official published figure. Our guide on verifying the authenticity of an electronic visa website goes further, covering domain records and contact details. If you are unsure what your trip requires, start with the requirements checker.
What a legitimate service looks like
- The full price is visible before you enter passport details, not after.
- The consular fee and the service fee appear as separate lines, and the consular amount matches the government’s published figure.
- There is a named company, a registered address and a way to reach a person.
- Refund terms are stated, including what happens if the application is refused.
- No approval guarantees, and no processing times that beat the government’s own.
That is the standard we hold ourselves to. SimpleVisa charges a flat $39 service fee and passes the consular fee through at cost, with both amounts shown before you start the form. You are paying for the handling, and the government’s fee stays the government’s fee.
If you have already paid a scam site
- Contact your bank or card issuer. Ask to dispute the transaction as a chargeback, saying the merchant misrepresented the service. Card payments carry the strongest protection; bank transfers and cryptocurrency carry almost none.
- Keep the evidence. Save the site address, the payment receipt, screenshots of the pricing page and every email. Disputes move faster with dates and amounts attached.
- Report it. File with your national fraud or consumer-protection body, tell the destination country’s embassy or portal operator, and report the advert to the platform that carried it. Reports are what get lookalike domains taken down.
- Assume your documents were copied. If you uploaded a passport scan or photo, expect follow-up contact quoting your real details, and treat later messages about the same trip with suspicion.
- Apply again through the official route. A reference number issued by a fake site does not exist in the government system, and airlines check the government record at boarding. Paying a second time costs less than being turned away at the gate.
Before paying for any travel authorisation, confirm two figures and one address: the official consular fee, the total you are being charged, and the domain taking the money. When those line up, the rest is routine.