Magandang araw, kabayan. If somebody messaged you this week offering a New Zealand job and asking for a fee, stop before you send any money. The DMW issued a public warning about a scam that targets Filipinos looking for work abroad, and the pattern is the same one that has emptied OFW families' savings before. The difference this time is that the agency told us exactly how to check before you pay. This is the whole issue, because the check takes two minutes and the loss takes years to recover. |
In today's issue | › | The scam: a recruiter on Facebook or Viber offers a New Zealand job, sends a fake contract, and asks for a placement or visa fee upfront. | | › | Verify the license: every legal recruitment agency is listed on the DMW website. If the agency is not on the list, it is not licensed to recruit you. | | › | Three red flags: the recruiter asks for a fee before you sign a contract, will not give a DMW license number, and pushes you to pay through a money transfer app. | | › | If you already paid: report it to the DMW and to the NBI. You can still file a complaint even if the money is gone, and the complaint is what stops the next family from losing theirs. |
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Win of the Day | DMW Secretary Hans Cacdac Before you pay anyone offering you a job abroad, check if the agency is on the DMW list. If it is not, walk away. Department of Migrant Workers |
Two minutes of checking beats years of debtThe DMW warning is not about one bad recruiter. It is about a pattern that repeats every time a new country becomes a popular destination. New Zealand is the current target because the working holiday and seasonal worker visas are real and in demand, which makes the fake contracts look believable. The scam works the same way it always has. Somebody you have not met offers you a job you have not applied for, sends you paperwork that looks official, and asks for money before you sign anything with a licensed agency. Secretary Cacdac named it plainly. The check is free, it is online, and it is the one step that separates a real recruiter from a thief. Why it matters The families losing money to this are not careless. They are responding to offers that look exactly like the real ones, because the scammers copy the real contracts. The DMW list is the only thing the scammers cannot put on a fake document. Check the DMW list of licensed agencies → |
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The Headlines One · The bait A Facebook message, a fake contract, and a fee request. The pattern the DMW flagged works like this. A recruiter contacts you on Facebook Messenger or Viber and says they have a New Zealand job ready for you. They send a contract that looks like a real New Zealand employer offer, sometimes with a logo and a signature block. Then they ask for a placement fee, a visa processing fee, or a medical fee before you have met anyone in person or signed with a licensed Philippine agency. Once you send the money, usually through a money transfer app, the recruiter stops replying. The job was never real. The contract was copied from a template the scammers reuse across countries. What makes it believable is that New Zealand genuinely does hire Filipinos for seasonal and working holiday work, so the offer is not impossible. It is just not coming from the person who sent it to you. Two · The license check Every licensed agency is on the DMW website. If it is not there, it is not licensed. The Department of Migrant Workers keeps a public list of every recruitment agency licensed to deploy Filipino workers. Before you pay any fee, ask the recruiter for the agency name and the DMW license number, then check both on the DMW site. A licensed agency will give you the number without arguing. An unlicensed one will dodge the question, say the license is being processed, or tell you the check is not necessary because the job is direct hire. None of those answers are real. A direct hire still has rules, and a license being processed still means the agency cannot recruit you yet. If the name on the contract does not match a name on the DMW list, or if the license number comes back invalid or expired, that is the end of the conversation. Do not pay, do not sign, and save the messages. Three · Three tells Fee before contract. No license number. Payment through an app. The DMW warning names three signs that show up in every version of this scam. First, the recruiter asks for money before you have signed a contract with a licensed agency. A real recruiter does not collect fees upfront through a chat app. Second, the recruiter cannot or will not give a DMW license number when you ask. A licensed agent carries that number the way a driver carries a license, and they hand it over the first time you ask. Third, the recruiter pushes you to pay through GCash, Maya, Western Union, or another transfer app, often in the name of an individual person rather than a registered company. Any one of these is a reason to stop. All three together is a certainty. Four · If you already paid Report it. The complaint is what stops the next family from losing theirs. If you sent money before you checked, you are not the first and you are not the only one this week. File a report with the DMW through their public assistance channel, and file a second report with the National Bureau of Investigation's anti-fraud division. Bring the chat messages, the fake contract, the receipt for the money transfer, and the name and number the recruiter used. The money may be gone, but the report is the thing that lets the authorities shut the scam down. A scam that gets reported can be stopped. A scam that goes unreported moves on to the next contact on the same Facebook list. You are not reporting for yourself only. You are reporting for the person whose name is next on the recruiter's phone. |
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Jobs & Opportunities Stay safe: legitimate overseas jobs are DMW-licensed. Verify any agency at dmw.gov.ph and never pay a placement fee upfront. No license, no deal. Customer Support Representative, Direct-to-Consumer Brand NeoWork · Philippines, remote | Remote |
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| OFW DeskTue & Fri OFW Desk is where we put the one warning that matters this week. Today it is the whole issue. Peso today BSP reference rate, last published | 1 NZD = 36.20 PHP down 0.3 percent week on week |
OWWA this week OWWA's pre-departure orientation seminar is now bookable online. If you are leaving in the next 30 days, book the slot before you pay any recruiter. The seminar is free and a licensed agency will require it. Check schedules at owwa.gov.ph. Scam to avoid The New Zealand recruiter who messages you first, sends a contract the same day, and asks for a visa fee through GCash. The DMW flagged it. The license check takes two minutes. Do it before you send a peso. |
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Everyday Wins | Two minutes of checking beats years of debt. The DMW list of licensed agencies is free and public. The scam works because most people do not know the list exists, and the scammers know that. If you are reading this, you now know. Forward it to the cousin who is asking about New Zealand, the neighbor who shared a recruiter's post, and the group chat where somebody pasted a job offer today. The check is the win. |
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Quick Hits | ● | A direct hire still has rules. The DMW warning covers direct hires too. Even if no Philippine agency is involved, the foreign employer must be registered and the contract must pass through the Philippine Overseas Labor Office. A recruiter who says direct hire means no checks is wrong. | | ● | The scam is not only on Facebook. The DMW said the same pattern is running on Viber and WhatsApp, where the recruiter joins a group you are already in and private messages people who posted about looking for work. Treat any first message about a job the same way you treat a Facebook one. | | ● | Free pre-departure training is available through TESDA and the DMW. The online modules on workers' rights and contract reading are the ones that would have caught this scam before the fee was asked. Browse free TESDA courses → |
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Salamat for reading, kabayan. One job this week. If somebody in your feed shared a New Zealand job offer from a recruiter they have not met, send them the DMW link before they send the recruiter money. The list is free. The loss is not. If you have seen this scam in your own messages this week, hit reply and tell us. If it reached you, it reached hundreds of others. | Somebody you know is about to pay a fake recruiter The DMW is warning Filipinos about a New Zealand job scam running through Facebook and Viber. The fix is one check. Every licensed agency is on the DMW website. If the recruiter's name is not there, it is not licensed, and the fee is a loss. Send this to anyone looking for work abroad this month. Share Philippines Wins Everyday → |
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| Why this newsletter exists Philippines Wins Everyday is written for Filipinos who are building something: a first job, a way home, a child's tuition, a family's next step. We publish only what is open and checkable on the day it reaches you. Every job link is confirmed live through the employer's own hiring system on the morning we send it. Every government programme is quoted from the agency's own page, with the disqualifier stated plainly rather than buried. Anything we cannot confirm is left out instead of rounded up. Sponsorships keep this free to read. We do not take placement fees, we do not run recruiters, and we will never accept anyone who charges a Filipino for the right to work. |
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