Monday, February 19, 2018

China Teachers Alliance Publishes TEFL Blacklist To Scam-Proof Foreign Teachers



All foreigners who visit or do any business in or with China learn a quick lesson in the ugly reality that China has no shortage of cheaters, whether they are sellers, job agents, or employers.  So veterans who have worked in China for more than a decade have compiled this blacklist to avoid all the hungry Chinese wolves drooling over the thought of licking your bones clean. Foreign teachers are their favorite and easiest scam targets.  Accept this as my goodwill give to you...  


If you need more convincing...


Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Warning: Gi2C China Internship Scam Defrauds Hundreds Every Year!


What university graduate does not want to work for a huge fortune 500 company?  This is the dream that a company based in Beijing peddles by email, Skype, and with over 300 job ads on the internet every month. Gullible and naïve uni students take the bait and six months later ask their friends to kick them in the ass for being so stupid something "too good to be true"!

This company uses call centers in Beijing and Pakistan to solicit young people in English speaking countries to visit their very appealing website.  With fake reviews, paid shill testimonials and news aricles in Chinese newspapers (reporters were bribed to participate in the ruse) they makle themselves look very credible. They claim to have "guan xi" with all the top MNC and Fortune 500 companies in China (they don't) and if you are willing to do a free internship "you probably will be hired to a entryl level management position that pays at least $50,000 a year".  Great sales pitch that's so irresistible - but is all BS".

If you buy into the pitch they offer to help you "make it happen" and will even provide you your own apartment for a 90 day internship... for $3,999 but right now they only want a small deposit or "processing fee" of $300 or $500 to arrange an interview for you.  And if you do not get a placement within 45 days, they will refund this money. Sounds fair right?

You will get an interview but it is NOT that huge international company giving you the interview as you are led to believe but another Gi2C employee who plays the role of "HR director" and of course he/she tells you everything you want to hear, and you are ready to sign up thinking you will get that great job with a great salary.

When you get the "great news" email from Gi2c it comes with your internship contract that obligates you to pay their "placement fee of $999 - $3,699 depending on whether you opt for their housing and Chinese lessons. They never tell you that by the end of your 90 internship you will have invested over $7,000 because they only provide a private room in a "shared apartment" for your first 30 days and your air fare, daily meals, transportation to and from work, mandatory insurance, visa fees, etc is all your responsibility,

But since you think you have a great job awaiting you at the end of this rainbow you tell yourself the investment in your future career is worth it. When you arrive in Beijing however, you learn the reality when you are given a crap internship with a no-name Chinese company that thinks you are their gopher servant. You spend your work hours fetching and delivering things ranging from coffee to files, to messages, or they put you on a street corner to hand out brochures to people walking by, or they give 500 pages of horrible English translations to proof-read and correct every other day.

The room they gave you came complete with a filthy mattress full of bed bugs and you spend $40 a week on cortisone cream to stop the itching. You demand a refund but are shown the fine print in your contract. Unless you make a huge scene outside their office - you have zero chance of a refund as 179 people found out the hard way last year.

Realizing that the Chinese police care less about "YOUR problem" because you signed a contract, and a local Chinese lawyer wants $5,000 to file a claim for you, you make the best of your situation and end up looking for your own job in China and regret that you ever came across that "once in a lifetime opportunity" Gi2C ad on Google.

No need to take my word for all this... here are what other victims and former employees have to say about their former employer:




Here is a  telesales girl in Pakistan supposedly calling from Gi2C's "London Office" to give
you some "great news" that you have Skype interview tomorrow arranged with the "HR Director"

  She uses the name "Barbara Wilson" or "Haley Gilbert" See below)

if you cannot read the below, visit this link:





2018 Gi2C SCAM UPDATE:  These scammers are now using multiple alias company names and are fully exposed at http://reddit.com/r/chinascamcentral on pages 1-4.  The names they are now using include;

Getin2China

Gi2c

Wiseway Global Co.

Laowai Career Central

Wiseway International

Beijing Wiseway Consulting

And there may be more alias entities we do not know of.  But go to http://duckduckgo.com instead of google and search "gi2c, scam" because Google helps to conceal them since they spend a lot of money on Google Adwords.  Your search will bring up dozens of horror stories and the fact that they fabricate their own testimonials and reviews that say how great they are.




Friday, April 17, 2015

Fraud Alert! Avoid China Internship Scams That Ask For Money



Tis the season of the China internship peddlers who are now spamming hundreds of very appealing ads on line offering "International Careers Start In China With An Internship".  With struggling economies all over the world, many university graduates find these ads to difficult to resist and they take the deadly bait. They believe all the fake reviews and testimonials and six months later they wish they never saw that ad!  Private companies that charge money for internship placements in China are hardly ever legitimate.  Genuine China internships are ALWAYS  FREE as explained here: http://chinainternshipreviews.wordpress.com

Real internships are sponsored directly by real Fortune 500 Companies, real MNCs, real NGO's and real SMEs and unlike the scammers, they do not advertise.  But when you want to believe the impossible - that paying $99 to $4,999 for an internship placement will land you a $50,000 job after 90 days, it is easy to ignore the many red flags that identify a China internship scam as follows:

1)  You are asked to pay up-front and/or other fees

2)   You are solicited by email or Skype to apply for an China internship

3)   You are told to lie on your visa application about WHY you are coming to China

4)   You directed to look at "testimonials" of other interns

5)    Your questions are ignored or evaded.

To see current scams in progress, Google "China Internship Scam" or visit these links:

http://eslwatch.info/forums/china.html

http://ChinaScamWatch.org

http://realscam.com

These China internship scams use the most convincing websites that are very easy to believe. Don't be fooled. You NEVER have to pay even $1 to get a internship in China and please remember the that only 28% of the real internships ever lead to full-time jobs. So if you get one, keep your expectations realistic.  Here are some other articles that you may want to read about internships...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/student-life/10709334/Unpaid-internships-work-for-pay-never-pay-for-work.html

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/do-unpaid-internships-lead-to-jobs-not-for-college-students/276959/

http://www.examiner.com/article/never-ever-pay-for-an-internship

2018 Gi2C SCAM UPDATE:  These scammers are now using multiple alias company names and are fully exposed at http://reddit.com/r/chinascamcentral on pages 1-4.  The names they are now using include;

Getin2China

Gi2c

Wiseway Global Co.

Laowai Career Central

Wiseway International

Beijing Wiseway Consulting

And there may be more alias entities we do not know of.  But go to http://duckduckgo.com instead of google and search "gi2c, scam" because Google helps to conceal them since they spend a lot of money on Google Adwords.  Your search will bring up dozens of horror stories and the fact that they fabricate their own testimonials and reviews that say how great they are.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Fraud Alert: Beijing ChiWest & CUCAS Study In China Scams Impersonate Chinese Government With Fake Web Site Domains!

Thousands of university students around the world are being victimized by a very sophisticated scam operated by a fromer Chinese official name Peter Zheng and his wife Zheng Tian Ying of Beijing China. The Scam has been operating since 2010 when Zheng, a former official of CERNET (China's domain registrar) began illegally using .cn and .edu.cn domains for his privately owned and for profit company CUCAS.

This deception tricks students abroad and expats in China to falsely believe that CUSAS is either a government agency, or as some CUCAS sales people have boasted "part of the Ministry of Education".  This is patently false.  The deception is deep and has been used to bamboozle hundred of students to enroll in Chinese universities every month through an elaborate scheme...

CUCAS spams ads all over the internet luring foreign students to study for free in China with offers of scholarships. The applicants from America, Canada, Australia, India, Russia, the U.K. and every EuroZone nation are told that CUCAS works for "FREE" But that their sister company "Beijing ChiWest must be paid over $1,000 in processing and servicing fees. The applicant never realizes that Beijing ChiWest is also owned by Zheng according to Beijing licensing officials at SAIC.
 
The scam deepens when student applicants are told they have their choice of any Chinese university. But after their service and application fees are paid, the students get "bad news & good news" from CUCAS staffers who tell them they were turned down by their school of choice, but accepted by 10 other universities!  All 10 of these other universities have contracts to pay Zheng a substantial commission.

CUCAS collects over $2,000 from every foreign applicant who thinks that money is going towards tuition!  Foreign students are then led to glowing reviews and "testimonials" that are bought and paid for at six different web sites like gooverseas.com, studyabroad.com, etc.

CUCAS even uses legitimate expat forums and web sites like Chinese-Forums.com to advertise for him. Former clients of CUCAS who attempt to post complaints on forums where CUCAS advertises report having their warnings and complaints deleted within an hour of posting them.

Those who take the time to google "CUCAS, complaints, scam, problems, fraud" will find the company has a history of complaints going back to 2011, with over a dozen complaints at Fraudwatchers, and other scam reporting sites.

Our staff has advised Interpol and the Chinese authorities about this operation and we urge any and all high school and university students to avoid contact with CUCAS and Beijing ChiWest which solicits via email, Skype, and Google Adwords.  The company operates out of an office located in Shang Di which is on Line 13 of the Beijing Subway System on Beijing's west side of town just North of Wudaokou. Although their sales people sometimes brag that they are an American company our investigation reveals that they are staffed by nine young Chinese people, presumed to be recent university graduates. Domains used by the two scam operations are CUCAS.cn, ChiWest.cn, CUCAS.edu.cn, and edu.cn.


2018 CUCAS SCAM UPDATE:  These scammers are now using multiple alias company names and are fully exposed at http://reddit.com/r/chinascamcentral on pages 1-4.  and  at scam.com.