Scam Watch

Direct answer

Scam Watch publishes the shapes of fraud reported on moving routes: payment channels, urgency scripts, lookalike website patterns. It never names an individual or a firm. A website that is not on the Official Portal Directory is described as "not official", which is a fact Waymora can check, rather than "a scam", which it cannot.

Method

1. Reports arrive as patterns: channel, script, requested payment method, lookalike host shape.
2. Waymora compares hosts against the Official Portal Directory and reports only the match result.
3. A pattern is published when it recurs across independent reports and carries no named entity.
4. Anything naming a company or person is routed to authorities instead of being published.
5. Safety content is never paywalled and never rate-limited.

Pattern

Lookalike website with an inserted word or hyphen

A website address that adds words like “official”, “apply”, or a hyphen to a government name, on a suffix that is not the agency's.

Check: Compare the address, character by character, with the Official Portal Directory before you type anything.

Pattern

Payment moved off the official channel

A request to pay a government fee by transfer to a personal account, a messaging-app wallet, gift cards, or crypto.

Check: Government fees are paid on the agency's own portal or at its counter. Nothing else is a fee.

Pattern

Manufactured urgency around a deadline

A same-day deadline, a “last slot”, or a threatened cancellation that appears only in the message, never on the agency page.

Check: Reload the agency's own page. A real deadline exists there too.

Pattern

Unlicensed agent asking for original documents

A request to hand over an original passport or certificate to someone whose licence number cannot be confirmed with the regulator.

Check: Ask for the licence number and confirm it with the regulator before handing anything over.

Pattern

Rental deposit before any viewing

A holding fee, first month, or bond demanded before you or a trusted local representative has seen the property.

Check: Do not pay yet. Prefer a viewing or a verified local representative, then a signed contract.

Pattern

Listing brand used as a fake payment rail

A message that says you must pay “through” a familiar listing brand on a website that is not the site you typed yourself.

Check: Open the real listing site from your own bookmark. Listing catalogues are not escrow for ordinary long-term deposits.

Pattern

Deposit steered onto Zelle, Venmo, Cash App, or PayPal

A rental or agency paste that asks for a deposit, hold, or fee on a consumer payment app that is hard to reverse.

Check: Treat that rail as a risk pattern before you send money. Prefer a viewing and a signed contract on a channel you can verify.

Pattern

WhatsApp-only landlord who will not meet

Contact that leaves the listing messenger for a chat app and refuses a viewing, video walk-through, or named local agent.

Check: Ask for an in-person or verified local viewing before any transfer. Keep the original listing URL.

Pattern

Advance-fee immigration or housing guarantee

A large fee demanded to “guarantee” a visa, a permit, or a flat sight-unseen, with urgency and no regulator licence you can confirm.

Check: Confirm any representative on the regulator’s own register. Waymora does not recommend agents and does not invent fees.