Visa scam that makes a mockery of PM’s pledge on migration: Undercover Mail investigation exposes fixers who take cash to help unskilled workers fiddle the system

Corrupt immigration advisers are helping illegal workers dupe the Home Office in a cash for visas scam, a Mail investigation has found.

They are charging up to £22,000 per person to provide ‘skilled’ jobs in the UK for under-qualified foreign workers.

It comes amid concern skilled worker visa routes could be hiding an immigration scandal ‘worse than the small boats crisis’.

Critics claim it could render Sir Keir Starmer’s immigration crackdown pointless after he made new restrictions on skilled visas a major tool in ending the economy’s reliance on cheap overseas labour.

The ruse has proved so lucrative that many companies have started up just to profit from hiring foreign staff – then shut down after a year, having extorted migrants and exploited them for cheap labour.

The scam involves businesses telling the Home Office they can’t find the right people in the UK and therefore need special ‘sponsorship’ licences to recruit workers from abroad.

Immigration advisers then coach immigrants how to lie to officials, overstating their levels of education and experience to secure the visa.

One adviser – a partner in a government-regulated advice firm – was secretly filmed admitting taking hefty bungs to teach foreigners how to fraudulently apply.

Corrupt immigration advisers are helping illegal workers dupe the Home Office in a cash for visas scam, a Mail investigation has found. Pictured: Joe Estibeiro, the managing partner of an immigration advice firm. He old the Mail’s undercover reporter how he tricks the Home Office into believing employers need a certificate of sponsorship to take on overseas workers

Critics claim it could render Sir Keir Starmer ‘s immigration crackdown pointless after he made new restrictions on skilled visas a major tool in ending the economy’s reliance on cheap overseas labour

Leicester-based Joe Estibeiro, the managing partner of an immigration advice firm, told the Mail’s undercover reporter how he:

• Tricks the Home Office into believing employers need a certificate of sponsorship to take on overseas workers.

• Organises firms to advertise the positions in the UK. 

• Helps employ immigrant workers who will officially earn about £3,000 a month to meet minimum salary requirements for the visas – but in reality they will receive only about £900 a month as they will have to hand the rest back to their boss.

• Secures the visas for applicants with little or only high school education in their home countries.

Mr Estibeiro even claimed the Government didn’t care if companies bring in unqualified staff on skilled worker visas, insisting: ‘The Home Office is just interested in the money.’

The foreign staff he helps recruit have to pay illegal work finder fees of between £19,000 to £22,000 to their new employer for the job and visa, with Mr Estibeiro pocketing a large commission.

They then have to work 60 hours a week and, in real terms, will earn far below the minimum wage, in some cases with a take-home pay of less than £4 an hour.

Mr Estibeiro (pictured) even claimed the Government didn’t care if companies bring in unqualified staff on skilled worker visas, insisting: ‘The Home Office is just interested in the money’

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘These so-called immigration advisers and immigration lawyers appear very often to arrange immigration fraud. These people need to be identified’

Leicester-based Joe Estibeiro told the Mail’s undercover reporter how he organises firms to advertise the positions in the UK and secures the visas for applicants with little or only high school education in their home countries

Mr Estibeiro, managing partner of immigration advisers Flyover International, said he works with businesses in Bradford, Leicester, Northampton and Peterborough.

Incredibly, his Leicester headquarters overlooks the bureau of a Home Office affiliate where UK visa applications are processed. A long-serving recruiter for a small Hertfordshire domiciliary care company said there has been widespread abuse in the overseas recruitment of supposedly skilled workers.

‘It’s all gone absolutely mad,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand how so many people are getting into this country without any checks. The situation is making the small boats crisis seem like a minor problem.’

Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp said: ‘These so-called immigration advisers and immigration lawyers appear very often to arrange immigration fraud. These people need to be identified.’

Last night, border security minister Dame Angela Eagle said: ‘We have immediately suspended this firm’s sponsorship licence.

‘Urgent investigations continue and if the allegations are true, they risk having their sponsor licence revoked and sponsored workers complicit in abuse could face their visas being cancelled.’

The skilled worker visa scheme was introduced in December 2020 and in the first three years alone more than 931,000 visas were issued – far outpacing Home Office predictions of 360,000 for this period, according to the National Audit Office.

Flyover International is regulated by the Immigration Advice Authority, but Mr Estibeiro is not a registered adviser. The firm specialises in international student recruitment.

The foreign staff Mr Estibeiro (pictured) helps recruit have to pay illegal work finder fees of between £19,000 to £22,000 to their new employer for the job and visa, with Mr Estibeiro pocketing a large commission

Last night, border security minister Dame Angela Eagle (pictured) said: ‘We have immediately suspended this firm’s sponsorship licence’

The firm is owned by another man who is understood to be investigating and said that Mr Estibeiro was not officially hired to work in the UK end of the business.

Mr Estibeiro denied involvement in any ‘illegal or unethical’ activity and said he was ‘solely involved in student recruitment’. He insisted he always told anyone who inquired about certificates of sponsorship for skilled worker visas that ‘we do not deal with such matters’.

The Immigration Advice Authority said: ‘We recognise the seriousness of the issue and are working closely with the Home Office to determine the most appropriate course of action.’

Dame Angela added: ‘Since taking office there have been 40 per cent fewer visa applications, we have removed 24,000 people with no right to be here and arrests from illegal working raids are up 42 per cent.’

Q&A 

How do UK companies hire overseas workers? 

Employers usually need a sponsor licence from the Home Office. This allows the firm to issue certificates of sponsorship for eligible overseas employees, which cost £525 per worker, to be paid to the Home Office. Employees use the certificates to obtain a UK skilled worker visa.

Can firms or UK recruiters charge workers for sponsorship or jobs?

No. Businesses are responsible for paying the sponsor licence fee and any associated administrative costs. The Home Office can revoke licences of businesses they find have recouped, or attempted to recoup, any part of the sponsor licence fee or associated administrative costs, by any means. It is also illegal for UK-based recruitment agencies to impose fees on individuals for the promise of securing employment opportunities.

Is there a minimum salary for staff on skilled visas?

Yes, though this varies depending on the role. For all routes, licensed businesses must ensure the role they are sponsoring the worker for complies with both the national minimum wage and the working time regulations.

What are immigration legal advisers?

Depending on their level, advisers can help with visa applications, obtaining leave to remain, nationality and citizenship and, at the highest level, represent clients at immigration tribunals.

Advisers must be registered with the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) which is tasked with ensuring they are competent and act in their clients’ best interests.

What rules do they have to follow?

The OISC Code of Standards says immigration legal advisers ‘must not knowingly or recklessly allow clients, the Commissioner, the Home Office, the courts and tribunals and/or third-party agencies to be misled’, and ‘not abuse any judicial and/or immigration process.’

Migration fixer’s brazen promise to undercover reporter posing as Indian student 

By Tom Kelly, Investigations Editor for The Daily Mail

Tightening restrictions on skilled worker visas was a centrepiece of Sir Keir Starmer’s much-vaunted crackdown on spiralling immigration.

The Prime Minister has promised that new rules – demanding that applicants for the permits must be graduates – would help to ‘lower net migration’, provide a higher-calibre workforce and stop the UK becoming an ‘island of strangers’.

But a Mail investigation can reveal that managers of immigration advice firms are already using tricks that could render many of the planned changes pointless.

During an extraordinary hour-long meeting, Joe Estibeiro, managing partner of the immigration adviser Flyover International, detailed to our undercover reporter how he makes a mockery of government rules despite his firm being officially ‘approved by the Home Office’.

Skilled worker visas were introduced in December 2020 to mitigate the impacts of Brexit on the labour market and supposedly attract high-quality employees to the UK. Businesses licensed by the Home Office can pay a £574 fee to the department to issue certificates of sponsorship for foreign workers seeking to come to Britain using the visas. Employers must ensure that immigration laws are properly upheld, including a minimum salary depending on the job.

Bosses and employment agencies also cannot charge a fee to a work-seeker for finding them a job or pass on visa charges or other administrative costs to the migrant.

But from the headquarters of the Leicester-based firm, which also has offices in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Anand in Gujarat and works with 350 agents across India, Mr Estibeiro told how he arranges sponsorship licences for crooked businesses and then recruits staff for them – for a five-figure fee.

During an extraordinary hour-long meeting, Joe Estibeiro, managing partner of the immigration adviser Flyover International, detailed to our undercover reporter how he makes a mockery of government rules despite his firm being officially ‘approved by the Home Office’

From the headquarters of the Leicester-based firm, which also has offices in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Anand in Gujarat and works with 350 agents across India, Mr Estibeiro (pictured) told how he arranges sponsorship licences for crooked businesses and then recruits staff for them – for a five-figure fee

He told our reporter, who was posing as an Indian student wanting to stay in the UK after his study visa expires, that he could arrange a job for him shelf-stacking and running the till at convenience stores in either Peterborough or Northampton. The opportunity would cost the reporter £19,000, plus the annual health surcharge.

There was also the chance to work in a role moving stock at a drinks warehouse in Yorkshire, but this was more expensive because the boss had got a ‘bit greedy’ after recently managing to hire some Pakistani staff, who he claimed had paid the warehouse boss £22,000 to secure similar roles, Mr Estibeiro explained.

Most of the illegal fee goes to the employer, but Mr Estibeiro said he took ‘a little bit of commission’ of £1,500.

‘So basically you pay me and then I pay the employer,’ he said. ‘We will handle everything. So that’s all-inclusive. So including the visa – I’ll do all the paperwork.’ The initial £5,000 deposit to start the process could be paid by bank transfer, but not to his company otherwise the foreign worker might reveal he was charged for a job.

‘We can’t take it on Flyover.

I’ll give either my personal account [or] I’ll give somebody else’s, like one of my clients’ personal accounts.

‘See, there can’t be a trail of it. Can’t be a paper trail.

‘That’s why even when I am sponsoring someone, I will use somebody else to do it.’ Further payments would need to be cash, he added.

Mr Estibeiro told our reporter, who was posing as an Indian student wanting to stay in the UK after his study visa expires, that he could arrange a job for him shelf-stacking and running the till at convenience stores in either Peterborough or Northampton

Mr Estibeiro told the reporter that for both jobs he would on paper receive an annual salary of £33,000, most of which he would have to repay to his new boss. ‘Basically, because when we get a COS [certificate of sponsorship,] we have to show £33,000 per annum,’ he said.

Tax on this official salary would be deducted and paid to HMRC as PAYE and National Insurance, so it all appeared official. ‘Everything is paid… he’s gonna get a pension. He’s going to get proper payslip.’

After these deductions, this would mean the reporter would receive about £2,750 monthly paid into his account for the convenience store job, but he would have to hand all but £900 back.

‘The owner will tell him that, OK, put it in this account, or, you know, withdraw cash and give it.’

The worker would also receive accommodation – probably a shared room above the shop – and food from the store owners.

In return he would have to work ten hours a day, six days a week in the shop. In real terms this meant he would almost certainly be earning under the minimum wage.

But Mr Estibeiro said: ‘Once you get your visa… then you’re on the route to permanent residency.’

Sponsored migrants were also allowed to bring spouses and partners to the UK, he said. ‘Within a month, go to India, get married, bring her back over here and then she can apply [for sponsorship to work].’

Mr Estibeiro said he charged £1,750 for arranging the sponsorship licence and recruiting staff for firms. His services included providing a ‘good justification’ to show the licence was required to ensure the application was approved

Mr Estibeiro said he charged £1,750 for arranging the sponsorship licence and recruiting staff for firms. His services included providing a ‘good justification’ to show the licence was required to ensure the application was approved.

But he explained there were ways to trick the Home Office into falsely believing the company was unable to recruit staff for the required role from the UK.

‘What I do with my client, one month before, two months before, we start advertising on Indeed and all those job sites.

‘We’ll get candidates for interview. So, the worst candidates, we will record a conversation. The good ones we’ll say, let’s not record it.

‘So then, if the Home Office does an inquiry as to why, you say I interviewed seven candidates, and if they say we need a proof, you have the proof.’

He said once the worker was in place with a visa there would be no further checks from the Home Office to make sure he really was a specialist. ‘They want people to come over here, because what is there in UK apart from immigration? How does UK make their money? Immigration.’

Despite it being called a skilled worker visa, he said no specialist skill was required to get a certificate of sponsorship.

Chuckling, Mr Estibeiro described how when he had his hair cut at a barber shop he had arranged a sponsorship licence for it was a ‘disaster’, apparently because the staff were actually trainees.

Mr Estibeiro explained how he had hired an overseas worker with only a high school education by claiming she was a ‘senior web developer’. They tricked the Home Office by telling the worker to enrol in a short web course costing around £200 in India so the worker knew what to say when interviewed by UK immigration officials (file image)

And he explained how he had hired an overseas worker with only a high school education by claiming she was a ‘senior web developer’.

They tricked the Home Office by telling the worker to enrol in a short web course costing around £200 in India so the worker knew what to say when interviewed by UK immigration officials.

Laughing, he said the worker was ‘not a web developer’, had completed only high school education and hadn’t obtained a degree.

He said things were even easier for migrants already in Britain hoping to switch from expiring education visas to skilled worker visas.

‘The good thing is, in UK right now, Home Office is not giving interview. So once you put an application, once you get it, that’s it. They don’t ask you for what… That’s the employer’s responsibility. The Home Office is just interested in the money you’re getting.’

He described how his phone rings ‘non-stop’ from 7am until midnight. The high volume of applicants meant sponsorship licences for skilled workers have become so popular in recent years that ‘everybody’ was opening businesses just to make money out of the scheme – including himself.

He said he had a restaurant which he opened ‘only for immigration purpose’.

‘So, you know, we’ll get a sponsor licence.

‘We’ll sponsor, get their money and then tell one of them that, OK, you take over the business, sell the business to him.

‘In a year, if we can make like, £30,000, £40,000. Why not?’

‘This is how everybody got into this business of sponsor licence. The business was very good in 2024. A lot of people made a lot of money.’

He even told a second undercover reporter at the meeting – who was posing as the Indian student’s UK-based cousin – that he could organise a sponsorship licence for his fitness business so he could also charge overseas workers £20,000 for visas and jobs.

Flyover International is based in a large centre a short drive from Mr Estibeiro’s £300,000 four- bedroom semi-detached home in a smart suburb on the outskirts of the city.

As the reporters left, he pointed across the concourse to an office of an official partner of the Home Office’s UK Visas and Immigration section, where applicants to stay in the UK provide their biometrics and complete visa applications.

The Home Office has launched an urgent investigation and suspended Flyover International’s sponsorship licence.

In the last six months of 2024, the Home Office revoked and suspended the highest total of skilled worker sponsor licences since records began in 2012.

An Immigration Advice Authority spokesman told the Mail: ‘We recognise the seriousness of the issue and are working closely with the Home Office to determine the most appropriate course of action.’

Flyover International is owned by another man who is understood to be taking the matter seriously and investigating and says that Mr Estibeiro was not officially hired to work the UK end of the business.

Mr Estibeiro denied involvement in any ‘illegal or unethical’ activity and said he was ‘solely involved in student recruitment’.

He insisted he always told anyone who inquired about certificates of sponsorship for skilled worker visas that ‘we do not deal with such matters’.