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Comment by testdelacc1 | Hacker News Reader

Another data point - 5he Indian visa system is similar. The official website ending in .gov.in, which is hard to find, offers a visa for $10 and minimal hassle. The scam websites, with better SEO sell the same shit for $80. They’re just proxying your application to the real website and pocketing the difference.

It would be good if the Indian government could block the scammers but I guess it’s a lower priority for the moment.

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The scam websites are probably owned by someone who works in the Indian govt.

Almost certainly, entire industries have been given over to indian scammers and their government allies.

Modhi, for one

damn bro, how bad situation on there????

I know that Indian scam stereotype is racist and bad but how much it is "that bad"

This was the case with Ghana. The Embassy in the US had an unofficial offical partnership with an expediter scam (charge more for faster shipping, looks very official). They fired the whole visa staff when it finally came to light. Probably because someone forgot to let their manager's manager in on the scam.

Not sure if this is the case for India, but I've experienced similar situations for other countries, but the 'scam websites' actually provided a real service - if you needed some ultra-urgent processing (like you only realized you needed a visa to this country before boarding a flight, once you were already at the airport check-in...) they were able to provide 30 minute approval, whereas the official site's accelerated processing was 24 hours.

So obviously the only way they could to this is with government contacts meaning the government themselves could already do it, but a lot of immigration stuff everywhere is full of people taking kickbacks.

No the scammers were slower than the official Indian website.

I found the real website, but the application never went through, always some issue. My boss told me which service to use and everything just worked. (I could expense that service so cost didn't bother me)

My understanding is that India visa processing improved quite a bit. Back when I was speaking internationally quite a bit, I actually had to cancel trips to India on two separate occasions because of delays in getting visas. (Once was under the old visa system and the other was because of delays in switching to a new system. Both times were through a visa expediting service.)

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