I need your help to expose this visa scam in Eldoret, Uasin Gishu county which is adversely affecting many students attempting to secure education opportunities abroad.
The scam itself involves being required to sign a fake bank statement when applying for a visa to study in a foreign country. Many applicants are demanding their money back, but they don’t realize that signing a fake bank statement and applying for a visa can have serious consequences. If the embassy rejects your visa because of the bank statement and you don’t reply within the deadline they give you to verify the bank account, you will be blacklisted for future applications. This applies to Canada, Australia and the US.
This happened to me at First Choice Agency Recruitment, run by the scammer Judy Chepchirchir. She is very powerful, I heard. One weird thing is that everyone has to take off their shoes before entering her office in Eldoret. I applied for a postgraduate certificate in Canada last year (2022). I paid a deposit of Ksh 200,000 to her agency. Everything seemed fine at first. I got admission to a school and everything was going smoothly. The problem started when I was applying for the visa. I had doubts about the bank statement, but they told me that the county government of Uasin Gishu was working with the Canadian government. It sounded believable since everything was going well. Michael Kibet, from the agency, persuaded us (me and my parents) to sign a fabricated bank statement (which we didn’t know then, but we trusted them because they had been transparent up to that point). We paid Ksh 40,000 for that. We then had to wait for the response from the Embassy. I waited for a long time until I became suspicious.
After many calls and queries, I finally got an answer that my visa had been denied because I hadn’t allowed the Embassy to contact my parents’ bank (since they were paying for me). I discovered that the agency received the response to my visa application before me, because they use a group account to apply for the visas and I could only access my account after they had received the response.
When I accessed my account, I discovered that the results had been sent two weeks earlier than the date the agency had told me. When I followed up on the reason for the visa denial, I learned that the Embassy allowed two weeks to communicate with my parents’ bank and verify their account status (basically to see if the bank statement we had signed was legit). This was very important because I could have honestly told them that I didn’t have the bank statement. The Embassy is understanding sometimes, as long as you are clear. However it was too late for me, since the two weeks allowance had already expired. My reputation was already ruined.
You might wonder why this matters. The reason is because these records are shared with other countries. I recently tried to apply for a visa to Australia but was denied again, without any clear reason. They can’t tell you it’s because of inconsistencies in your previous application to another country (for me, Canada) because they might get sued.
You might get your money back but if you signed the agency’s fabricated bank statement, don’t think you can apply for another country easily. It goes into your permanent record for a period of 5-10 years. My request is that, besides getting our money back, action should also be taken to ensure our records are deleted by the embassies.