A BBC investigation has exposed a large-scale immigration scam in the UK care sector, where recruitment agents, including a Nigerian doctor, are exploiting foreign nationals seeking employment.
The investigation revealed that these agents have been illegally selling non-existent jobs and creating fake payroll systems to conceal their fraudulent activities, prompting concern from authorities.
Dr Kelvin Alaneme, a Nigerian doctor and founder of CareerEdu, an agency based in Essex, was at the centre of the scam. The BBC’s undercover journalists, posing as potential business partners, were offered insight into how these scams worked.
Dr Alaneme claimed that recruiting care homes could make agents rich, offering a £2,000 ($2,600) payment for each job vacancy they could procure, plus a £500 ($650) commission. He then explained how these vacancies were sold to candidates in Nigeria, charging them for positions that did not exist.
During a secret meeting, Dr Alaneme said, “Just get me care homes. I can make you a millionaire,” and later admitted that candidates were paying for jobs despite it being illegal in the UK. “They are not supposed to be paying because it’s free. It should be free,” he said, acknowledging the exploitation but asserting that candidates felt compelled to pay due to the scarcity of legitimate opportunities.
One of the victims, Praise, a man from southeastern Nigeria, paid Dr Alaneme over £10,000 ($13,000) for a supposed job in the UK with a care company called Efficiency for Care. Upon arriving in the UK, Praise discovered the job was a fabrication.
“If I had known there was no job, I would have not come here,” Praise lamented. “At least back home in Nigeria, if you go broke, I can find my sister or my parents and go and eat free food. It’s not the same here. You will go hungry.”
The BBC’s investigation also revealed that Efficiency for Care, the company Praise was told he would work for, had issued over 1,200 Certificates of Sponsorship (CoS) to foreign workers between March 2022 and May 2023, despite only employing 16 people in 2022 and 152 in 2023. The company’s sponsorship licence was revoked in 2023, though it continues to operate. Efficiency for Care denied any collusion with Dr Alaneme and stated that it believed its recruitment process was lawful. It has since challenged the Home Office’s decision to revoke its licence in court.
Further, the investigation exposed more sophisticated scams, including fake sponsorship documents for jobs that did not exist. Dr Alaneme claimed that CoS documents not linked to real jobs allowed migrants to choose their location in the UK, although this is false. Migrants are required to work in the roles assigned to them to maintain their visas, and failure to do so can lead to deportation. Dr Alaneme also explained how fake payroll systems were created to cover up the lack of actual employment, saying, “That [a money trail] is what the government needs to see.”
The BBC also investigated another recruitment agent, Nana Akwasi Agyemang-Prempeh, who offered fake CoS for jobs in the construction sector after rules were tightened in the care industry. Agyemang-Prempeh allegedly set up his own construction company and obtained a sponsorship licence from the Home Office to facilitate the scam, charging up to £42,000 ($54,000) for three workers. The BBC’s undercover journalist, posing as a businessman wanting to recruit construction workers from Uganda, was told that this arrangement could be made for a price.
The Home Office revoked Agyemang-Prempeh’s sponsorship licence after the investigation. The Home Office issued a statement, pledging to take “robust new action against shameless employers who abuse the visa system” and to “ban businesses who flout UK employment laws from sponsoring overseas workers.”
Dora-Olivia Vicol, CEO of the Work Rights Centre, expressed alarm over the scale of the issue. “The scale of exploitation under the Health and Care Work visa is significant,” Vicol said. “It has turned into a national crisis.” Vicol pointed out that the sponsorship system, which gives employers significant power, has created a predatory market for middlemen and has led to systemic exploitation.
The BBC’s investigation follows similar reports of visa scams targeting people in Kerala, India, and international students in the UK seeking care sector jobs. As a response, in November 2024, the UK government announced a crackdown on “rogue” employers, and from 9 April 2025, care providers in England will be required to prioritize recruiting international care workers already in the UK before seeking recruits from overseas.
