Diversity Visa Program Scams

Diversity Visa Scam is a rip-off to target and trick people who are interested in owning “Green Card” in U.S. (to hold permanent citizenship in the United States). The fakers pose to be from the trusted U.S. State Department and, for a fee, they promise to increase chances of selection or make it easier for the applicants to enter the Annual Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program. Usually, they use different names for this Visa program, such as green card lottery, or the visa lottery, or the DV lottery.

Through a genuine DV program, U.S. State Department considers up to 55,000 visa applications every year and gives opportunity to the applicants to honor this privilege. The names of the applicants are randomly drawn which is notified by U.S. Department of State, and this is followed by few more steps needed to be taken for completing application procedure for Immigrant Visa. The department never send emails to the applicants in order to notify them about their selection or rejection. However, the State Department does not authorize any private organization to notify applicants via calls, emails or messages. Anybody extracting money in return of this service subjected to root fraud and should not be entertained at all.

The U.S. Embassy, London, has received 1000s of queries from victims of visa lottery frauds to seek help to get back their invested money. Embassy recommends people not to believe on unknown emails as U.S. Government never reach visa lottery winners via the Internet. Also, the government will NOT ask the winners to send money to the U.S. Embassy. Any message asking you to pay certain fee in return of the DV program is not a legitimate deal and it is a scam. The authentic way for applying for Diversity Visa Program is via official US State Department website during specific registration period.

DV Program Alerts

It is easy to realize that you are being targeted by a scammer under Diversity Visa Lottery Program as fraudsters –

  1. Try selling confirmation number
  2. Charge money in return of services
  3. Promise to increase your selection chances
  4. Try forcing you to fraud others as well
  5. Use your personal details without your consent
  6. Send emails saying you won and demand you to pay money
  7. Convince you to get involved in indebt contracts and pay consultation fee
  8. Present untruthful information about you

Diversity Visa Scam – Prevention

The best prevention against Diversity Visa Program scam is to have good knowledge on how State Department actually works to give Green Card – says FTC. It helps in avoiding these scams.

  • No charges to enter the random drawing of the DV Program
  • Entries are selected randomly
  • Submit just one entry
  • Only website giving authentic entrance to the DV Program
  • No fees to enter the DV Program
  • If the website URL does not ends with. gov, it simply means it’s not a legitimate website
  • Keep close hold on your personal information and documents

Learn more by reading this article on ShareAmerica.

How to Escape Diversity Visa Scam

When DV scam is suspected, do not hesitate to report to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

  1. Give call to the team at 1-877-382-4357
  2. Visit ftc.gov/complaint

Additional Information for Diversity Visa Program Scams

  1. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
  2. Authentic Diversity Visa Program
  3. The Diversity Visa Process
  4. Fraud warning and FAQs