One of Britain’s leading care providers has issued a warning after discovering people are impersonating the company in order to charge migrants looking for work thousands of pounds in “fees”.
On the social media pages of all of its more than 150 care homes, Care UK says it is “aware of unsolicited and fraudulent job offers being made, allegedly from our care homes”.
“If you are in any doubt of the legitimacy of an offer; we never ask you for money as part of a job application,” Care UK adds.
The scam – revealed by Sky News – has emerged as the government tightens immigration rules to cut the number of migrants entering the UK.
In the year to June, more than a third (37%) of long-term work visas went to care workers.
Amy, who lives in South Africa, was a victim of the scam while trying to get a visa to move to the UK, where her boyfriend lives. The 25-year-old’s name has been changed to protect her identity.
After seeing an advert offering roles within healthcare, Amy contacted what she thought was a recruitment agency, Zidaan Consultancy, in July.
She received an email stating a five-year certificate of sponsorship and visa processing would cost £4,500.
She decided to apply for care work because it was “the sector where most jobs were available”.
Advertisement
Amy paid an initial £500 “registration fee” and was advised a further £4,000 would be due once her certificate of sponsorship (a document required in order to be granted a visa) was issued.
Zidaan Consultancy then arranged a video interview with someone Amy was told was a representative of Care UK.
In September, she received another email, forwarded from Zidaan Consultancy, saying her interview was successful.
There was a job offer for the full-time role of healthcare assistant on a salary of £23,000 a year.
This message was originally sent by a woman whose email signature stated she was “recruitment director administrator” at Care UK. The same text was sent to 15 other people.
Amy contacted Care UK directly after she was given no further details on how to progress with a visa. She discovered Care UK had no record of her and the woman who had signed the job offer email was not an employee.
“I was very, very upset because it was such a long process to try and get the visa and then when I thought it was going to happen I was so happy,” Amy said.
“Now, all of a sudden it wasn’t even true. It was like I have to start from the beginning.”
Care UK says it has reported at least one company to the Home Office and it is working with the police on a separate investigation.
Leah Queripel, human resources director at Care UK, told Sky News: “It makes me very angry because they’re using Care UK’s name but they’re also trying to extort money from people and that is under our name.
“This does need to be looked at from a government perspective and not for companies to have to be relied on to fix it.”
Under the government’s new immigration rules, all care firms will have to be registered with the regulator, the Care Quality Commission, in order to get sponsorship licences, which allow them to recruit abroad.
But these new rules will do nothing to stop this kind of scam, where people fraudulently impersonate legitimate firms in order to illegally make money from people who want to move to the UK.
The Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) previously revealed to Sky News that exploitation of overseas care workers is its “number one priority”.
Marley Morris, associate director for migration, trade and communities at the Institute for Public Policy Research, told Sky News that a “more effective approach is actually targeting the abuse directly by ensuring higher standards, by resourcing the labour inspectorates properly, by ensuring that people are able to report abuse in a way that protects them”.
“Those, I think, are the measures that are going to deal with the issue rather than measures that are really targeted at just bringing down the overall numbers,” he added.
Zidaan Consultancy is still advertising vacancies for international recruits on its website.
Care UK says Zidaan Consultancy is not a company it has ever used.
Sky News has repeatedly emailed, messaged and tried to call the director of Zidaan Consultancy, Izzah Zidaan, to ask him to formally respond to these allegations. There has been no response at the time of publication.
A Home Officespokesperson said: “We do not tolerate abuse in the labour market and where we identify exploitative practices are being undertaken, we take action.
“The GLAA also work with other law enforcement agencies to identify illegal working, including incidents being reported to Action Fraud.”
The man who served 14 years in jail for the murder of schoolboy Jimmy Mizen has been recalled to prison for breaching his licence conditions.
It follows reporting in The Sun newspaper that Jake Fahri, 35, was a drill rapper releasing music under the name TEN, who conceals his identity with a balaclava, and was played on BBC 1Xtra.
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with Jimmy Mizen’s family who deserve better than to see their son’s murderer shamelessly boasting about his violent crime.”
Jimmy’s father Barry told Sky News: “We’re not gloating or anything, in a way it’s quite sad.”
His son bled to death after Fahri threw an oven dish at him in a south London bakery on 10 May 2008.
The dish shattered on his chin and severed an artery in the schoolboy’s neck.
Fahri was 19 when he was given a life sentence in 2009 with a minimum term of 14 years and was released on licence in June 2023.
More from UK
His music was played on BBC 1Xtra less than 18 months later, the Sun reported, adding that DJ Theo Johnson named him an “up-and-coming star”.
Jimmy’s father earlier said he and his wife Margaret were “stunned into silence” when they were told about Fahri’s music, which often features violent themes.
In one song, which appears to reference Jimmy’s death, he raps about “sharpening” a blade.
“Judge took a look at me, before the trial even started he already knows he’s gonna throw the book at me,” the lyrics say.
Another track includes the lines: “See a man’s soul fly from his eyes and his breath gone… I wanted more, it made it less wrong. Seeing blood spilled same floor he was left on.”
The BBC has said the artist’s tracks do not feature on any BBC playlists, and that a track which appeared to reference Jimmy’s death had never been played on its channels.
A spokesman for the broadcaster added there were “no further plans to play his music”, adding: “We were not aware of his background and we in no way condone his actions.”
A Probation Service spokesperson said: “All offenders released on licence are subject to strict conditions. As this case shows, we will recall them to prison if they break the rules.”
Jimmy’s parents founded the Mizen Foundation after their son’s death. The charity helps young people in London who are escaping violence.
Mr Mizen said: “It appears that if he’s been recalled to prison, he must’ve breached his licence conditions
The man suspected of abducting Madeleine McCann won’t face any charges in the foreseeable future, a prosecutor has told Sky News.
German drifter Christian B, who cannot be fully identified under his country’s privacy law, is expected to be freed from an unrelated jail sentence this year while police in three countries continue to search for evidence against him.
Prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters said: “There is currently no prospect of an indictment in the Maddie case.
“As things stand, the accused Christian B’s imprisonment will end in early September.”
Madeleine, aged three, was asleep with her younger twin siblings in the family’s Portuguese rented holiday apartment before mother Kate discovered her missing at around 10pm on 3 May, 2007.
Her parents were dining nearby on the complex with friends and taking turns to check on all their sleeping children every half an hour.
Madeleine’s disappearance has become the world’s most mysterious missing child case.
Philipp Marquort, one of Christian B’s defence lawyers, welcomed the prosecutor’s pessimism about bringing charges.
He said: “This confirms the suspicions that we have repeatedly expressed, namely that there is no reliable evidence against our client.
“We regret that we have not yet been granted access to the investigation files. We have not yet been able to effectively counter the public prejudice arising from statements made by the prosecutor’s office.”
Christian B, 47, is in jail and coming to the end of his sentence for the rape of an elderly American woman in Praia da Luz, the Portuguese resort where Madeleine disappeared.
In October, he was acquitted on a series of rape and indecent assault charges after a non-jury trial in Germany, in which several references were made to his status as the main suspect in the Madeleine case.
The prosecutor said he was awaiting the court’s written judgment before launching an appeal against the acquittal. He believes the trial judges were biased against the prosecution.
If successful, he could apply for a new arrest warrant for Christian B to keep him in custody until a retrial with new judges.
He said: “We hope that the Federal Court of Justice will decide before the end of the accused’s imprisonment. If the Federal Court follows our legal opinion, we could apply for a new arrest warrant for the accused’s offences, so that the accused would then remain in custody beyond September 2025.
Mr Marquort said the defence team would oppose the prosecution’s appeal against the acquittal.
Prosecutor Mr Wolters has said in the past that he believes Madeleine is dead and that Christian B was responsible for her death. The suspect denies any involvement.
The case against Christian B is purely circumstantial; he’s alleged to have confessed to a friend that he abducted Madeleine, he has convictions for sex crimes against children, he was living in the area at the time, his mobile phone was close by when the young girl vanished and he re-registered one of his vehicles the next day.
The prosecutor won’t say what evidence he has to convince him Madeleine is dead, but he admitted he is still trying to find forensic evidence to link Christian B to the girl.
Jim Gamble, former head of the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection centre, said he had expected the prosecutor to charge Christian B soon.
“He’s implied the whole way through that he has something more than the public are aware of,” he said.
“He’s made fairly definitive statements about whether Madeleine is alive or dead so you would expect their strategy to have been to charge him sooner rather than later.
“From what he’s said today I wonder if we’re witnessing the re-positioning of something to manage the disappointment that’ll come.”
Mr Wolters, who is based in Braunschweig, Lower Saxony, is investigating the case with the help of Portuguese police and detectives from Scotland Yard.
An investigation, led by the Surrey and Sussex Police Major Crime Team, is under way and inquiries remain ongoing, police said.
Senior Investigating Officer DCI Kimball Edey said specialist officers “are working around the clock to gather as much information as possible,” and that the force’s “thoughts are with the family and friends of the victims at this unbelievably difficult time”.