In the beginning of September of 2024, a Pakistani criminal organization of cyber fraud was brought up in the UK. The scammers were trying to sell to young pakistans the ability of the elusive dream of life in the UK, first by studying in a distinguished university, then by working in the care sector.
Who wouldn’t like to obtain better living conditions for himself and his family by leaving Pakistan, in order to study and live in the UK, in conditions that seem like a living paradise in comparison to the conditions of everyday life in Pakistan?
Escaping Pakistan
But let’s take a moment to think what are the conditions in which an average pakistan lives, so as to understand first hand why he is capable of giving up everything he has in order to save himself from his own country? Pakistan is a country of 226 millions of people that is faced with the sufferings of overpopulation as the vast majority is living below poverty line.
It is a country where children’s labour thrives, with many kids working in brick construction companies almost all day long for less than 5 dollars as an every day wage.[1] Not to mention, they are working in an extremely affected by air pollution environment, where a lot of diseases thrive. In addition, the habitants are faced with floods and contagious diseases. As a result, they are willing to do everything they can in order to escape.
But how did the Pakistans find out about the job offer in the UK? In 2022, in Britain there were 165.000 job offers in the care sector, both in hospitals and in structures offering help at home. The government announced these job offers, and that caught the attention of a lot of workers in Pakistan, Nigeria and Philippines immediately. That was the vault of the scammers.
As BBC’s investigation indicated, the scammers found their victims through online platforms, where they were applying for these job vacancies in the care sector in the UK. Living and working in the UK is the perfect bait for scammers. The majority of the Pakistani workers needed an intermediary, who would help them with all the bureaucratic matters of working in the UK, varying from plane tickets and visas, to university application and fees as well as job applications and health certificates..
All the young applicants from Pakistan paid an average amount of 17000 pounds for visas and for tuition fees for the university that was supposedly expecting them. When they arrived in the UK they found out that there was neither a university expecting them nor a job. When they contacted the university, the university authorities replied that they had never received any kind of application by them or any fees. They were speechless because they had just understood the trap they fell into. They had nothing in their hands, not money, not visa, not even a plane returning-home ticket. So, they were trapped in the UK, unable to return to Pakistan.
The universities reported this incident to the police, so police investigations begun immediately. Τhe Agency For Fighting Cyber Crime started the investigations and it reached the scammers through the messages in their phones and the money transactions in their bank accounts. The investigations led to their chief, the Pakistani Taimour Raza, who was in charge of the fraud and had earned 1,2 billions from the victims. He had rented an office in East Mindland, where he had hired employees to sell fake visas. Of course, when the police arrested him, he denied everything, but the evidence that was against him was enough.
The BBC research brought to light some of the testimonies of the victims.[2]
‘’Help, I am trapped in United Kingdom without any money. I have spent all of my family’s savings. I can’t go back to Pakistan without having achieved anything’’ said Nila, who was scammed to pay 38.000 dollars. In another case, one of the scammers told 21 year old Nadia ‘’Υοu look like my sister’’, so she believed him and she paid him 8.000 dollars at once, so that he could help her work in an elderly house in Worhol.
When the documents were delayed, Nadia called herself the nursing home, and the scam was revealed. The nursing home knew nothing about Nadia and the money she had given for the necessary work documents. Nadia then called the middleman, who blocked her from everywhere. As she revealed to the BBC, she was afraid to go to the police, because the crooks could harm her and her family, therefore all she could do was just keep waiting.
In this particular case, we were dealing with young children, who offered and actually lost the efforts of a lifetime of their families, in order to seek a better fortune. However, the shipwreck of Pylos that took place in May of 2023 in Greece is not that far away from this, in which 300 Pakistanis lost their lives, and of course the victims were many more.[3] Pakistan is a state with such living conditions that its habitants can do everything within their power in order to escape.
Conclusion
Since the beginning of the world’s existence, people, motivated by the survival instinct, do everything within their power to escape from horrible conditions, many times not only at the cost of money, but also at the cost of their very own lives. This is understandable, even though it reaches the borders of existentialism itself. However, what is not understandable is the ethical identity of people who take advantage of their fellow citizens’ desperation, as in this case those scammers who offered young Pakistanis better life in England.
Of course, this is how we get to the sad realization about human nature. The worst kind of tyrants are in many cases the ones who have just emerged from the miserable conditions they used to live in before, and they are ready to come back to their fellow human beings, with a lightning-fast memory wipe and from now on from a position of power. This time they are the exploiters who will benefit from the tragic fate of their until recently ‘’relatives’’.
[1] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/resources/reports/child-labor/pakistan
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c97w1x2deyvo
[3] https://www.ot.gr/2023/06/19/epikairothta/shipwreck-in-pylos-over-300-pakistani-immigrants-lost-their-lives/
