How migrants are buying fake jobs to stay in the UK illegally
In a quiet corner of an east London restaurant, surrounded by diners on a Wednesday night, a visa agent explains his plan to dupe the Home Office. Leaning across the table, unaware he is being filmed, he spells out in detail how he will help secure a work visa for a migrant at risk of deportation from the UK.
On paper, everything will look legitimate. All the evidence will show his customer works for a small event-management company and has the experience needed to do the job.
There will be a fake CV and, further down the line, bank records and payroll documents showing that the man earns £55,000 a year. If anyone questions him, he will have been coached on his supposed duties so he knows what he is talking about.
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In reality, the job won’t exist. The man won’t work in event management and the skilled worker visa sponsorship will come with no work. Each month, he will pay back his “salary” to a different bank account — with fees on top. It’s “only payroll. There is no job,” the agent says. “We do not have any jobs … We only sell you the CoS [certificate of sponsorship]. That’s it.”
He explains he can arrange the sponsorship, which will allow the man to apply for his visa, for £13,000. There is a catch: he will be unable to work legally and must pay a monthly fee to keep the sponsorship in place. But in the long term, the paperwork could be a path to staying in Britain permanently. “It’s just a two-minute job,” the agent says.
Fake jobs, real visas
This deal is one of thousands being made across Britain in an immigration black market. In this case, the customer is an undercover reporter. But a Times investigation reveals a “mushrooming economy” of middlemen charging illegal fees for visa sponsorship, and hundreds of fake jobs being offered by criminal networks.
Secret filming shows unregulated agents offering to arrange visa sponsorship for migrants for jobs that do not exist. The deals enable people to obtain visas by presenting sponsorship certificates issued by the real Home Office-approved companies that claim they are being hired in genuine jobs.
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Roles eligible under the skilled worker route include management, office, IT, finance and marketing jobs, which typically must pay more than £41,700, as well as “shortage” roles that can pay as little as £25,000 — including nursing assistants, bricklayers and graphic designers.
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On paper, the “worker” may earn good money and be highly skilled at their job. In reality they do not work for their sponsor and may have no relevant qualifications. Some will instead work cash-in-hand in the UK’s black economy.
The sponsorship costs up to £20,000 and is risky. Those who are caught face entry bans or deportation. But the prize is a chance to stay in Britain long term. Under the existing rules, workers can apply for permanent residency after five years — and the fake paper trail can help prove “legitimate” continuous employment.
Over four months, The Times went undercover to investigate the networks behind the schemes. We spoke to 26 agents and company representatives selling sponsorship, and documented more than 250 examples of fake jobs being offered. The jobs were offered at businesses including hospitality, logistics, social care, IT, finance, marketing and graphic design.
After being contacted about the findings, the government said it would open an urgent investigation. The Home Office said: “We are investigating this illegal activity and it will not be tolerated.”
‘Dependent allowed, no work’
Outside McDonald’s in Leicester city centre, Nirav Madhvani paces up and down. He looks on edge, his hands tucked in the pockets of his denim jacket. After a few minutes he goes inside and, without ordering, heads to a table upstairs.
The Times arranged the meeting after finding 120 posts from Madhvani offering sponsorship over two years. In more than 30 cases the posts indicated that the sponsorship was fraudulent. “Genuine Company. Dependent Allowed. 100% payroll. No work,” one said in August.
In messages, we told Madhvani we were a man who had arrived as a care worker and needed new sponsorship because his original company had lost its overseas hiring licence.
It is a familiar story: many who turn to the black market were recruited legally to work in the UK but have since lost their sponsorship, giving them 60 days to find something else or leave the country. Others targeted by agents are international students who want to stay after their graduate visas end.
Madhvani, a business management graduate, responded to the inquiry saying he had no care jobs available but could help with something else. “I got warehouse without work,” he wrote, “£13k [fee] for 3 years.”
In person, he tells the undercover reporter he will be sponsored through a wholesale trade firm as a “business associate professional”, a “medium-skilled” corporate role eligible for the skilled worker visa. Then he pulls up documents on his phone to prove he has done this before. He shows a five-year sponsorship certificate issued for a client a month earlier.
Madhvani explains that in this case, the sponsorship will be through a Leicester-based firm that holds a Home Office sponsorship licence. Last year it reported assets of £8,367 and zero employees but sponsored at least one worker, records show.
To begin the process, the applicant will provide ID and pay a 25 per cent cash deposit. Then the certificate of sponsorship will be assigned, enabling him to apply for a skilled worker visa.
If it is granted, the company will register him with HM Revenue & Customs and fabricate payroll processes to make it appear as though it is paying him a salary.
In the long run, this paperwork can be crucial. Skilled workers can typically apply for indefinite leave to remain after working for five years. They must provide records proving they have been working and paying taxes. “On paper everything is, like, proper,” Madhvani says.
In reality, the man must pay back his “wages” to a different bank account, with an extra fee to cover the employer taxes, amounting to hundreds of pounds a month. If he doesn’t, his sponsorship can be cancelled at any time. “Whatever you get paid, you have to pay back the company,” Madhvani says.
Trade fuelling illegal work
People with the bogus “payroll only” visas get no work through their official sponsor. But agents promote a rule that allows skilled workers to work up to 20 hours in another job. If it matches their original role or is on the shortage list, they don’t need to tell the Home Office. Dependents of some skilled work visa holders can also work.
Other people using the bogus visa schemes work cash in hand. “You can get visa but you still have to work somewhere in cash … you won’t be able to work anywhere, like legally,” Madhvani says.
He says it would be better to get a real sponsored job but that vacancies nowadays are scarce. The main advantage is “you are going to stay here”, he says. “The people who want to stay, they’re going to do it somehow.”
It is not clear how much money Madhvani makes from these deals. Agents fixing visas can earn commission or a lump sum on top. But he suggests it is the employers — not him — that benefit most. Customers face high demand and a shortage of sponsored jobs. “That’s why these companies are trying to make money,” he says.
Madhvani says he will arrange a meeting with a director of the company, so the initial payment can be made. A few days later he messages to say he can no longer help, perhaps suspecting that his customer is not genuine. When approached for comment, he locked his social media accounts and denied offering sponsorship. The company did not respond.
‘No job responsibilities required’
The skilled worker visa scheme was introduced in 2020 under Boris Johnson and later expanded to plug shortages in social care.
It allows migrant workers to be sponsored by one of about 87,000 employers in “skilled” jobs, such as executive and management roles, or lower-skilled jobs in shortage occupations, such as bricklayers, decorators and nursing auxiliaries.
In its first three years about 931,000 skilled workers and dependents arrived, triple the number forecast by the Home Office. It has since been tightened to raise minimum salaries for many jobs, restrict care workers and remove eligibility for more than 100 medium-skilled roles. The fall in skilled roles is helping fuel the black market and leading some migrants who arrived in the so-called “Boriswave” to turn to fraudulent options, the Times investigation indicates.
No official data has been published on the extent of fraudulent “payroll-only” sponsorships and experts say the majority of skilled workers are genuine. But the National Crime Agency has warned of “increasing numbers of sponsorship licences enabling fraudulent sponsorship for migrants” and experts say the system is open to abuse.
It is prohibited for employers to charge for sponsorship — regardless of whether the job is real — but amid high demand for visas and lax oversight, evidence suggests that many do. Those selling fraudulent sponsorship can be prosecuted for facilitating illegal immigration, which is punishable with fines or prison, but penalties beyond a suspension on further hiring are rare.
Despite continued high demand, there has been a fall in companies hiring skilled workers and reporters found thousands of posts from agents offering sponsorship in the UK through 13 Facebook groups with almost a million members combined.
One agency, Daffodil Management Services, says it has offices in London, Bangladesh and Malaysia and has promoted 160 sponsored roles in the past six months — some of which are “payroll only”.
One post said: “Looking to secure a future in the UK under a valid skilled worker visa route — even without job duties? Certificate of Sponsorship (CoS) issued. No actual job responsibilities required.” Others include promotions for a payroll-only teaching assistant sponsorship and a payroll-only social worker sponsorship. The Luton-based firm did not respond to requests for comment. Records show its filings are overdue.
‘It’s a money game’
Outside Whitechapel station in east London, among commuters on a Friday, an agent who gives his name as Nazmul says he can arrange sponsorship for a reporter in “clothes shops, IT, office admin”. But he says it will be “very difficult” to get genuine work, adding that “99.99 per cent” of companies he works with “don’t have any jobs”.
For sponsorship with real work attached he says the cost will be about £16,000. For £2,000 less, he says he can arrange a payroll-only visa. The sponsorship is “worth it” if it is in a role that permits dependents, he says, explaining that they can work “anywhere”. After a crackdown in the care sector he says applying for senior jobs through an IT or office firm is the best bet, adding: “There is a high chance to get the visa.” He did not respond to requests for comment.
Another agent, calling himself Abhi Mahato, claims he can arrange “no job” sponsorship in “any industry”. “On paper you will be working with that company but in reality you won’t,” he says in a call. “You don’t go to their office and work 40 hours per week. You can do anything anywhere. You can do cash-in-hand job.”
He says the deal will require mutual trust: “This is illegal thing, right? [It] might be you are someone from Home Office.” He described it as a “money game”, saying: “Many people like you … are looking for this thing. And like me also, many agents are working in the same thing. So the thing is, it is a kind of money game. [The] one who puts the money first, they get the slot.”
Mahato — understood to be a fake name — appears to be operating as part of a much wider network of agents selling sponsorship using at least five phone numbers and 20 Facebook accounts. He did not respond to requests for comment and The Times could not verify the legitimacy of the ads.
We traced one man linked to the listings to an address in east London, using bank details provided for a transfer. A former flatmate said he had left the country and was living in India.
The Times investigation found evidence of other fraudulent practices, including agents and sponsors inflating on-paper salaries to meet the higher salary rules. Others are mislabelling jobs altogether to avoid scrutiny, including registering care workers as nursing auxiliaries.
Light punishment for rule breakers
The findings have prompted calls for a crackdown on the black market and questions about how the schemes have operated openly.
Meta said it banned fraudulent activity and removed content from agents violating its policies. HMRC said it took reports of payroll fraud seriously and would investigate information it received.
The Home Office has increased compliance, stripping almost 1,948 employers of their sponsor licences in the year to June 2025, up from 937 the year before.
Yet those who break the rules often escape with light punishments, such as temporary hiring bans. The Times found dozens of suspicious companies that had been stripped of their licences and since had them reinstated. Prosecutions are rare. Asked how many times it had referred sponsors for criminal investigation, the Home Office said it did not hold such data centrally.
The government is also under pressure over migration, which is likely to be a key issue at the next general election. Net migration to June last year was at 204,000, down from 944,000 in 2023.
The Home Office said it would do “whatever it takes to secure our borders” adding that skilled worker visa refusals had risen and sponsor licence revocations were at “record levels”. It said it had doubled the period that companies that repeatedly flout the rules must wait before being able to reapply for a sponsor licence, from one year to two.
Professor Brian Bell, the government’s top immigration adviser, said the vast majority of skilled workers appeared to be hired legitimately but that weak punishments were enabling abuse. He called for prosecutions of those orchestrating the “exploitative and unlawful” schemes and likened them to criminal gangs that used other methods to help people enter or remain in the UK unlawfully. “If you’re facilitating someone to stay here unlawfully it is breaking the law and should be dealt with appropriately,” he said. “I think of this as being just as bad, frankly, as running a small boat.”
Reform UK said the sale of fraudulent sponsorships was a scandal showing failures under successive governments. Zia Yusuf, its head of policy, said: “A lax sponsor licence system has enabled fraudulent visas, illegal working and a thriving black market where agents pocket tens of thousands while the Home Office looks the other way.”
Max Wilkinson, Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, said the findings of the investigation were “appalling” and showed failures of both the previous and current governments. He said: “Criminal gangs are profiting and rules are being flagrantly disregarded. The government urgently needs to fix the system.”
Chris Philp, the Conservative shadow home secretary, said the findings were “shocking” and showed the government had “no control” on immigration. He said fraudsters were enabling people to stay in the country unlawfully, adding: “Shabana Mahmood [the home secretary] must urgently grip this problem.”
Home Office ‘doesn’t know’ if workers leave when visas expire
Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the Work Rights Centre, said people were being pushed towards a “mushrooming economy” of middlemen after struggling to find legitimate sponsors. She said that revoking licences rather than prosecuting rogue firms was “outrageous”, adding: “The only thing they’re getting is a slap on the wrist.”
‘Our only option is to die’
For migrants turning to the black market, the risks are high. As well as agents helping to secure real visas, data from ActionFraud shows that reports of sponsorship-related scams rose from only three in 2021 to 341 in 2024 and 531 in the first ten months of last year. Scammers clone websites, spoof email domains and impersonate company directors to extract money.
A mother from Zimbabwe said she lost £7,000 after paying agent fees to secure a job she believed was real but that never materialised.
She told the Work Rights Centre the company’s licence had since been revoked, and workers’ visas curtailed, but that the director did not appear to have been punished. “People need to go to jail,” she said.
Another woman who said she lost £20,000 in family savings after being scammed by an agent said she felt her “only option” was “to die”. “[We] are under so many debt,” she wrote. “Feeling so bad. Worked so hard to face this. Why?”
Paying knowingly for fake jobs carries extra risks. Obtaining a visa by deception is a criminal offence, punishable with entry bans, removal, fines or prison. Staying after a visa has been revoked is unlawful.
For some with limited options, it can be worth the gamble. The Times spoke to people who were willing to pay for “payroll-only” sponsorship and found evidence of people requesting it online.
One person wrote: “Hi I’m looking for a UK CoS even without a job offer, can anyone help?” Another said: “My visa ends in December, I completed three years in the UK as a caregiver in a private company. I need two years’ sponsorship if anyone can help me — even only payroll, I give them monthly tax. I am very stressed.”
‘Visa within a week’
Back at the east London restaurant, the visa agent is keen to close the deal. The man, believed to be a Bangladeshi national known as Ovy Hossain, admits that Xina Event Management, the firm he says he is representing, does not have a real need to hire. But he stresses that the company is “genuine” and the documents “100 per cent proper”.
As proof, he explains that the company has sponsored other workers before, himself included.
After the meeting, Hossain passes on the details for the company’s chief operating officer, Rayhan Gafur. In a red Toyota with the hazard lights on, parked on the side of a Canning Town street, Gafur, 39, reiterates Hossain’s offer. He says there will be a charge for the sponsorship to cover employer taxes, which he later says will be about £400 a month.
Gafur appears cautious at first and at one stage questions whether the man is recording. Told later of evidence gathered by the Times, he suggests that he was himself a victim of fraud. He denied selling or offering to sell sponsorship and said neither he nor Xina had engaged in unlawful activity. “Could be some of my enemies doing this,” he said.
In the car, though, he seems confident the plan will work. He pulls up documents on his phone for a man who he says “just got visa within 24 hours”. “This is CoS from my company. I gave him,” he says. He instructs the reporter to send him money via his friend’s bank account and reassures him that no one is going to question him. “I’m giving you a guarantee,” he adds. “You’re going to get the visa within a week.”