We have recently been contacted by several members of the public who have fallen victim to scammers using an organization’s name located in the United States to extract payment from them for visa services. They received an invitation for participation in an international conference and were asked to pay over $2,000 USD for providing visa-related services. Avoid becoming a victim by taking the time to read the following.

• We will never email a visa applicant from a Gmail account. Official U.S. government email addresses end in “.gov,” and any visa-related correspondence coming from an address that does not end with “.gov” should be considered suspect.
• The list of main U.S. government websites containing official visa and immigration information, including free information and forms, is available here: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel.html.
• We will never ask you to pay the visa application fee by check, money order, or Western Union. The visa application fee is paid in cash, on the day of your scheduled visa interview.
• The online visa application is for free and it’s available on our website: https://tj.usembassy.gov/visas/.
• We will never ask you to translate/legalize supporting documents unless your case has been already reviewed by a Consular Officer and the Consular Officer determined there is a need to do so.

If you wish to file a complaint about internet fraud, please see visit econsumer.gov. You can also visit the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) website at www.ic3.gov.

If you wish to file a complaint about unsolicited email, contact The Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership among the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), and the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BIA), at www.ic3.gov.