Bank Director Warns Moroccans to Be Careful From Scammers Offering Schengen Visa Appointments
According to a post published by Director Bellali, scammers are offering random people to sell them appointments for Schengen visas and then end up stealing money from their bank account, AtoZSerwisPlus.com reports.
“Never share your bank information. Given the appetite of citizens to obtain appointments for Schengen Visa applications from BLS and TLS centres, mercenaries have set up shop and claim to sell nearby appointments. They offer their services on social networks,” the Director of the CMI informs.
These individuals usually pretend to sell appointments for obtaining visas on social media and then ask people to share their bank information in order to finalise the payment with Visa Application Centres. Then, the scammer asks for a validation SMS code, which makes the payment transaction validated.
These illegalities are coming at a time when people are looking for such appointments, which makes it a perfect situation for people with ill intentions to thrive. As the CMI’s Director revealed, a woman in a hurry to get an appointment for her family for medical reasons was victim to such a scam, and her card was run five times, indicating that over €2722 was stolen.
“However, this is a payment transaction for a reload of the scammer’s mwallet. The latter is not satisfied with a single operation; he tells the victim that the payment has failed under the pretext that he mistyped the code, and they repeat the operation a second time, a third time,” CMI’s Director writes in his post on LinkedIn.
This isn’t the first time Moroccans have been subject to scammers, as earlier this year, hundreds of Moroccans wanting to reach Germany were reportedly scammed by brokers offering fake work contracts.
This broker, H.J., is believed to have asked those interested in travelling to Germany for work reasons to pay from €1,500 up to €9,000 for a work contract.
A lot of young Moroccan nationals who hold a professional bachelor’s degree and who also can speak the German language want to leave for Germany since the latter offers better working conditions and perspectives than Morocco.
Moreover, Morocco is one of the main countries of origin for asylum seekers in Europe, with the destination countries being Germany, Spain and France. In data from 2020 and 2021, Moroccans have listed ninth on the top 30 citizenships of first-time asylum applicants, with Syrians, Afghanis and Iraqis being the leading nationality groups.
