Fake job offer in Dubai: warning signs for Nigerian families

A job offer in Dubai is very likely fake, or a way into trafficking, if you never applied for it, if anyone asks you for money, if it reaches you through WhatsApp, Instagram or a friend of a friend rather than a company you can check, or if you are told to travel first and sort the papers out when you arrive. A genuine UAE employer pays the recruitment and visa costs, and the offer can be checked on the government’s own website before you do anything else.

Women are often recruited through someone they know and trust, which is why the offer is so hard to refuse. This page is for the woman holding that offer now, and for the parents, sisters and pastors who are being asked to bless it.

Five checks to make before you pay, sign or travel

1. Did you apply for this job?

If the offer arrived without an application, someone chose you. They may have chosen you because you are young, short of money and unlikely to ask questions. A real employer has to find staff and will want to know what you can do. A trafficker is selling a dream, so the questions are about how you look, not what you can do. Be careful if you are asked intimate questions and nobody asks about your skills.

2. Is anyone asking you for money?

The UAE government’s own guidance for people coming to work in the country says the employer is responsible for paying the recruitment expenses under UAE labour law. Its page on staying safe from labour and visa fraud is worth reading in full. So a fee for the “visa”, the “registration”, the “ticket” or the “agent” is a warning sign. So is a promise that you can pay it back from your first wages. That promise is how a debt is created, and a debt that keeps growing is how women are held. It is a pattern we saw in the casework when we brought women home: a “debt” for visa and travel that never goes down.

3. Can the offer be checked?

According to the same government page, a job offer to someone outside the UAE should come as an offer letter issued through the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation (MOHRE), and its reference number can be checked through the ministry’s enquiry service. The government explains the steps on its page about job offers and the employment process. Ministry websites sometimes go down or block visitors from abroad, so if a page does not open, try again later or ask the ministry through the contact details on the government page. It also suggests searching for the company’s name, in English and in Arabic, in the UAE’s National Economic Register to make sure it exists. If the person offering you the job cannot or will not give you a reference number to check, do not go further. A letter on good-looking paper or a PDF proves nothing on its own.

4. Where did the offer come from?

A genuine company has a website and a company email address you can check, not only a WhatsApp number and a Gmail account. Be careful when the whole conversation happens on WhatsApp, Facebook or Instagram. Traffickers also work through trusted people: a friend of the family, a friend of an aunt, sometimes a pastor or church worker. Their network can reach into your own community and your own family, and some of the family members involved have been tricked or are in debt themselves. A trusted introducer is a reason to check more carefully, not less.

5. What are you told about the journey?

The official route begins with a checked offer, not with a visit visa. If you are told to arrive first and have the papers done “on the ground”, or to hand over your passport to an agent, treat it as a warning sign. A woman in the UAE without her passport, a visa or money can do almost nothing: she cannot buy a SIM card, receive money, rent a room or leave. That is why traffickers so often take the passport.

What traffickers say and do

Our older pages describe the same pattern, and it has not changed. Lucrative jobs for Nigerians in the United Arab Emirates lists the signs in detail. The ones to remember:

Too much glamour. The recruiter posts shopping malls and fashion on social media. That is a curated story, and it is part of the sales pitch.
Plenty of promises, few facts. You are not told the name of the employer, the address of the workplace or what the contract says. If you cannot get a straight answer, trust that feeling.
An oath. You are asked to swear an oath or take part in a ritual that binds you and your family to the arrangement. A genuine employer has no reason to ask for one.
Pressure to decide now. A real job will still be there if you take a week to ask questions.
A network that goes all the way through. The woman who offers you the job, the person who collects the money and the one who meets you at the airport are often part of the same network.

The Hope Education Project publishes a guide to avoiding fake job offers with the same warning signs from its work in Ghana, including free email addresses, payment demands and pay that is too high for the work.

A real-looking offer can still end in exploitation

Not every trap is a fake company. Our page on dream jobs in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for Nigerians explains that foreign workers do most of the work in the UAE, that wages which look high from Nigeria are barely enough to live on there, and that the sponsorship system makes it easy to hide a victim and hard for her to leave. Visa renewals and overstay fines can push a woman into the hands of the police.

Some women are told the truth about the work and still do not know about the debt, the control or the violence that come with it. In the research I led with the Hope Education Project, Nigerian women described being forced and beaten once they arrived in the UAE: read what survivors told us. Our article on Sex in Dubai: what’s the real story? explains how debt bondage works.

If you or your family have been made an offer

Stop and slow down. Do not pay, sign, hand over a passport or book a ticket in the same week you first hear of the job.
Ask for the reference number of the offer and check it yourself on the government’s enquiry service, through the government pages linked above. Do not ask the agent to check it for you.
Talk to someone outside the agent’s circle. Because the network can reach into churches and families, speak to a person who has no connection to the agent, or to a trusted organisation. Our resources for Nigerian women trafficked to Dubai list organisations in Nigeria and the UAE, including the National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).
Keep copies. Keep photographs of every message, every voice note, the offer letter and any receipt, and keep the originals of your passport and documents with you.
Tell someone where you are going, with the employer’s name and address, and agree how you will check in.

If someone close to you has already gone and you are worried, read funds for repatriation to Nigeria and then contact us. Helping a woman get home costs real money, and the donate page explains how it is used.

Where this comes from

This article draws on Stop Trafficking Africa’s own pages and casework, the Hope Education Project’s published guidance, and the UAE government’s current advice on labour and visa fraud, last updated on its website on 24 September 2026. Check the official pages yourself, because rules and website addresses change.