How does the "Fake or scam websites" scam work for MBBS abroad?

Look-alike sites that copy a real university's or consultancy's branding, collect application fees and personal documents, then vanish or resell the data. Also social media pages posing as "official admissions cells". A polished site or Instagram page with "official" in the name, stock photos of doctors, and a form asking for passport scans and a fee. Domain registered recently; contact details are only WhatsApp numbers. The real university's site lists a different URL and different contact details.

How do I check before paying?

Get the university's real website from the World Directory listing, not from a search ad. Search the domain on our Check page and on the fraud alerts. Never upload passport or certificate scans to a site you found through an ad or a forwarded message.

🚩 Scam pattern

Fake or scam websites

Look-alike sites that copy a real university's or consultancy's branding, collect application fees and personal documents, then vanish or resell the data. Also social media pages posing as "official admissions cells".

0 reviewed reports and 6 first-person stories of this pattern on TrustMBBS.

How it usually goes

A polished site or Instagram page with "official" in the name, stock photos of doctors, and a form asking for passport scans and a fee.
Domain registered recently; contact details are only WhatsApp numbers.
The real university's site lists a different URL and different contact details.

Red flags

🚩 Domain differs slightly from the university's (.in/.org/.co instead of the real one, extra words)
🚩 Only WhatsApp as contact
🚩 Application fee payable by UPI to an individual
🚩 No physical address that checks out on a map

How to verify in 10 minutes

Get the university's real website from the World Directory listing, not from a search ad.
Search the domain on our Check page and on the fraud alerts.
Never upload passport or certificate scans to a site you found through an ad or a forwarded message.

Check a name now Ask a verified student

Stories of this pattern

📰 From the news 1 Nov 2026

A medicine degree with no RVOE, warning seals since July 2024, 35 complaints: the Universidad Potosina campus on Avenida Carranza, San Luis Potosí

In Mexico a private university programme is valid only if it holds a Reconocimiento de Validez Oficial de Estudios (RVOE) from the federal or state education a…

📍 San Luis Potosí, Mexico

📰 From the news 25 Oct 2026

"This notice is FAKE": the forged MCC notice cutting the NEET eligibility percentile that circulated on 13 October 2026, and why agents wanted candidates to believe it

In the last days of NEET UG 2026 counselling a document began circulating on social media that looked like an official notice from the Medical Counselling Comm…

📍 New Delhi, India

📰 From the news 24 Sep 2026

Twenty-five unaccredited nursing schools and a "training college" the regulators say does not exist for licensing purposes: Ghana's public warnings, and the students who enrol at their own risk

Ghana's health-training sector is regulated by two bodies, the Nursing and Midwifery Council for the professions and the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission fo…

📍 Kumasi, Ghana

📰 From the news 24 Sep 2026

A blacklist before the academic year: Egypt's 2024 list of institutions selling unaccredited degrees, and how to check an Egyptian medical college against it

Egypt has become a serious destination for foreign medical students, including a growing number from India, Malaysia and Africa, and its public universities ar…

📍 Cairo, Egypt

📰 From the news 12 Sep 2026

7,600 fake nursing diplomas from three Florida schools: Operation Nightingale and the licence that a purchased transcript can buy

The United States is where the international verification system was built, and it still produces credential frauds at scale — most recently in nursing, a prof…

📍 Florida, United States of America

📰 From the news 12 Sep 2026

AED 365,000 for a dentistry degree at an institution with no education permit: the Dubai "universities" that only needed you to be 17 and able to pay

Free zones are built to make it easy to open a business. In Dubai, that ease was used to open medical schools. Gulf News reported in September 2018 on three in…

📍 Dubai, United Arab Emirates

No reviewed reports of this exact pattern yet — which only means nobody has reported one here. If it happened to you, report it or tell the story.

Other patterns

Overcharged and hidden fees Forced unrelated services Fake admission or "guaranteed seat" Impersonating a real college or agent Other scams and traps