Is this email from Immigration genuine? The three checks that settle it, the scams one by one, and what to do if you have already paid

MARN 1576536

How the Department actually contacts you

The Department communicates about an application by placing a letter in the ImmiAccount under the application's correspondence or messages, and by sending an email notification, from an address ending in gov.au, telling the applicant or their authorised recipient that correspondence is available; the letter in the account is the communication and the email is the pointer. Requests for information, invitations to comment on adverse information, grant notices, refusal notices, notices of intention to consider cancellation and cancellation decisions all arrive this way, with the period to respond stated in the letter and running from the date it is taken to have been received. Some correspondence goes by post to the address on the application, and some verification happens by telephone or in person, with an officer who identifies themselves, asks questions about the application, does not ask for payment, does not threaten, and whom the applicant can ask to call back on the Department's published number. The Department does not send grant letters as attachments from a personal email service, does not ask an applicant to reply by email with documents, does not provide a link to log in, and does not call to collect money. Everything the Department has said to an applicant can be seen by logging in to the account, from the Department's own website, without following any link.

The three checks

First, the address. The Department's email addresses end in gov.au, usually homeaffairs.gov.au, and a message from an address ending in anything else, .com, .net, .org, .info, .in, .pn, .au without gov, a free webmail service, is not from the Department regardless of the sender's display name, the logo, the crest, the reference number or the officer's title, all of which are copied from genuine letters; the address is read in full, in the email's header rather than the display name, because a display name can say Department of Home Affairs above any address. Second, the account. Every letter the Department sends about an application is in the ImmiAccount correspondence for that application, and an applicant who receives an email about a grant, a refusal, a request or a fee logs in to the account, from the Department's website and not from a link in the email, and looks; a letter that is not there was not sent, whatever the email says. An applicant whose application was lodged by an agent and who has no account creates one and imports the application with the TRN and the passport details, so the check is available to them. Third, VEVO. A granted visa appears in the Department's Visa Entitlement Verification Online service within hours of the grant, found by the passport details and the grant number, and a grant letter whose grant number finds nothing in VEVO with the correct passport details is not a grant; the visa numbers guide covers the details VEVO needs. The three checks take minutes, cost nothing, and settle the question for every email and letter; what follows is the catalogue of what fails them.

The fake grant letter

The fake grant letter arrives as an email, often with a PDF attached that reproduces the layout of a genuine grant notice, the crest, the headings, a grant number, conditions, a visa period, sometimes a real officer's name copied from a published document; it is sent to a person who has applied for a visa, or who has paid someone to apply, or who has been told a visa was obtained for them, and it is sometimes followed by a request for a final fee, a visa label fee, an airport clearance fee or an insurance payment before travel. It fails the checks: it is not in the account's correspondence, its grant number finds nothing in VEVO, and its sender is not gov.au. A person who holds a fake grant letter and travels on it is refused boarding by the airline, which checks the Department's system and finds no visa, or is refused entry at the border; a person who has paid an unregistered agent and holds a fake grant letter has, in the worst case, had no application lodged at all, and in the common case has had an application lodged with contents they have not seen, which the unregistered agent guide addresses. A genuine grant notice is in the account and the visa is in VEVO; nothing else is a visa.

The refusal that can be reversed for a fee

A variation sends a refusal notice, or a notice that the application is about to be refused or the visa cancelled, with an offer: pay a fee, a penalty, a reconsideration charge or a priority fee, by a link, a transfer or a gift card, and the refusal will be withdrawn, the officer will reconsider, the file will be moved. No such thing exists. A refusal is reviewed at the Administrative Review Tribunal, on an application the person lodges and a fee the Tribunal publishes, paid to the Tribunal; the Department does not reverse refusals for payment, does not sell reconsideration, and has no officer who can be paid to change a decision, and an email that says otherwise is an attempt to take money from someone at their most frightened. The same applies to a cancellation notice with a fee to avoid cancellation, a notice of a fine for a visa breach payable by card, and a notice that an application has been placed on hold until a charge is paid; the visa application charge is paid through the account at lodgement and, for the second instalment on some visas, through the account on the Department's request in the correspondence, never by any other route. A person who receives a refusal or cancellation email checks the account; if a genuine notice is there, the refusal guide and the cancellation guides set out the real options and their real periods, and if it is not, the email is deleted.

The deportation call

The telephone version is a call, often to a student, a recent arrival or an older person, often in the person's own language, from a number that shows as Australian or as a government number because it has been spoofed, from a caller who gives a name and an officer's title, cites a reference number, and says that the person's visa has a problem, that a form was not lodged, that a fee is unpaid, that a warrant has been issued, and that unless a payment is made today, by card over the phone, by gift cards whose codes are read out, by cryptocurrency or by transfer to an account, the person will be arrested and deported tonight; sometimes the caller keeps the person on the line while they go to the shop. Every element is false. The Department does not call to demand payment, does not threaten arrest or deportation by telephone, does not take payment by phone, and does not deport anyone without written notice and a process with periods to respond; the Australian Border Force, which enforces the migration law, does so in person and by written notice, and the police do not collect immigration fines. The person hangs up, does not call back the number given, and, if worried, calls the Department's published number from its website and asks whether anything is outstanding, which is almost always no. A person who has been told by a caller that they have breached a condition reads the breached conditions guide for what a real breach looks like, and it does not look like a phone call.

The guaranteed visa and the visa lottery

An offer of a guaranteed visa, a visa within days, a permanent visa for a flat fee, a special quota, a fast track known to the agent, or a contact in the Department, is an offer no honest person can make: the decision on every visa is the Department's, made on the criteria, and the Code of Conduct forbids a registered agent from guaranteeing an outcome or claiming influence. Australia runs no visa lottery, no green card draw, and no selection by email; the only ballots in the migration program are the published ballots for the Work and Holiday visa for some countries and for the Pacific Engagement visa, entered through the Department's own site for a published small fee, and an email saying a person has won a visa they did not apply for is a scam. The same is true of a message saying the person has been selected, pre-approved or shortlisted for a visa, a program or a skills list, and of a social media advertisement for a visa with no interview, no English and no points. The real programs are described in the visa guides on this site and on the Department's site, and each has criteria, a charge paid through the account, and a decision that nobody can promise.

The job offer with a visa fee

A person abroad is offered a job in Australia with visa sponsorship, by email, on a messaging app or through a recruiter, and is asked to pay: a visa processing fee, a sponsorship fee, a work permit fee, a medical fee to a nominated clinic, a police clearance fee to a nominated agency, an airfare to be refunded on arrival, a deposit to secure the position. A genuine employer pays the sponsorship, nomination and training charges itself and is forbidden by law from recovering them from the worker, and asking for or receiving a payment in return for sponsorship is a criminal offence for the employer; a genuine employer does not ask the worker to pay for the visa, the licence, the job or the flight, and the cost-recovery guide sets out what an employer may and may not charge. The sponsored worker's own costs, the visa application charge for the worker and family, the health examinations and the police certificates, are paid by the worker to the Department and to the clinics directly, through the account and at the clinic, never to the employer or a recruiter. The genuine process is visible: the employer is a real business the worker can find, the nomination is lodged by the employer and the worker's own application is lodged in the worker's own account with the worker's own charge, and nothing is paid to anyone before that. The sponsoring companies guide describes how sponsorship really starts, and an offer that does not look like that is not sponsorship.

The fake agent and the register

Only a registered migration agent or an Australian legal practitioner may give immigration assistance for a fee, and giving it without registration is an offence; the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority publishes a register of every registered agent, searchable by name and registration number, and an agent's registration number, the MARN, appears on their correspondence and advertising. A person who is not on the register and is not a lawyer, however many clients they claim, whatever office they occupy, whatever they call themselves, education consultant, visa consultant, immigration adviser, is not entitled to charge for assistance and is not bound by the Code of Conduct, has no professional indemnity insurance and no complaints body, and an application they lodge is lodged in the client's name, from the client's account or one they created, with the client responsible for every statement in it. The register is checked before any fee is paid and before any document is handed over, and an agent who will not give a registration number, or whose number does not match the register, is not engaged. A registered agent who guarantees a visa, asks for payment to an unexplained account, refuses to give the client access to the application, or lodges documents the client has not seen, is reported to the Authority, which can sanction and cancel registration, and the agent or lawyer guide describes what a properly engaged professional looks like.

The phishing login and the document request

A quieter scam sends an email that looks like a Department notification, with a link to log in to the account to view correspondence, update details, verify identity or confirm a payment; the link leads to a copy of the login page, and the username and password entered go to the sender, who then has the account, the applications, the passport details and the ability to change the email address and the authorised recipient. A related version asks the person to reply with a copy of the passport, a bank statement, a tax file number or a photograph holding the passport, for verification, which the Department does not do by email. The defence is never to log in from a link: the account is reached by typing the Department's address or using a bookmark, and a notification is treated as a reminder to go and look rather than a door. A person who has entered their details on a page reached from a link changes the password at once from the real site, checks that the email address, phone number and authorised recipient on the account are still their own, and reports it; a person who has emailed identity documents to a stranger treats them as compromised and tells the issuing authority.

If you have already paid or handed over documents

Money first: a card payment is disputed with the card issuer immediately, and a bank transfer is reported to the bank immediately, because a transfer within Australia can sometimes be recalled if the receiving bank is told before the funds move on, and the window is hours; gift card codes and cryptocurrency are, in almost every case, gone, which is why they were asked for, and are reported anyway. Accounts next: any password given, to the ImmiAccount, to email, to banking, is changed from the genuine site, with the account's recovery details checked, and the account's correspondence reviewed for anything the scammer did. Documents: a passport or identity document sent to a scammer is reported to the issuing authority, and the person watches for identity misuse through the steps the reporting bodies publish. The visa position is then read calmly, because the scam does not change it: a visa the person held is still held, and VEVO confirms it; an application the person lodged is still pending, and the account shows it; a visa the scammer claimed to have obtained does not exist, and no fee will make it exist; and a person who fears that an application was lodged in their name by the scammer, with false contents, requests their file, which the FOI guide covers, and takes advice on what it shows. A person who paid a fake agent for an application that was never lodged, and whose visa has meanwhile expired, is in the position the unlawful and bridging visa guides describe, and acts on it the same week.

Where to report

Scams are reported to Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre, which records them and publishes warnings; cybercrime, including phishing and account compromise, to the Australian Cyber Security Centre through ReportCyber; impersonation of the Department, fake visas and unregistered migration assistance to the Department through its Border Watch reporting form; misconduct by a registered agent to the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority; and a financial loss to the police as well, through ReportCyber or the local station, with the report number kept for the bank. A report rarely recovers the money, but it adds to the pattern that lets the banks, the platforms and the authorities stop the next one, and a report of an unregistered agent is the only way that person is ever stopped. The Department's own site carries a current list of the scams it has seen, which is worth reading once, and the Australian embassies and high commissions in the countries most targeted publish their own warnings.

The genuine-or-scam checklist

1. Read the sender's full address: gov.au is the Department; anything else is not, whatever the display name.
2. Log in to the ImmiAccount from the Department's website, never from a link, and look for the letter; if it is not there, it was not sent.
3. For a grant, check VEVO with the passport details and the grant number; a fake number finds nothing.
4. Any demand for payment by phone, gift card, cryptocurrency or transfer to a person is a scam; charges are paid only through the account.
5. Any threat of deportation or arrest by telephone is a scam; hang up and call the published number if worried.
6. Any guarantee, lottery, pre-approval or special quota is a scam; no one can promise a visa.
7. Any fee to an employer or recruiter for sponsorship, a work permit or a job is a scam; employers pay sponsorship and cannot recover it.
8. Before paying anyone for migration assistance, find them on the OMARA register or confirm they are a lawyer.
9. If you paid: bank first, then passwords, then Scamwatch, ReportCyber and Border Watch; your real visa position is unchanged.

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General information only, current at October 2026; not advice on your own case. The notification provisions of the Migration Act 1958 and the Migration Regulations 1994, the offences relating to unregistered immigration assistance and to payment for sponsorship in the Act, the Migration Agents Code of Conduct and the register maintained by the Office of the Migration Agents Registration Authority, and the Department of Home Affairs’ published guidance on scams and on how it contacts clients, all as in force at the date above; reporting bodies and their processes are as published by each. Outcomes depend on the Department’s assessment of each application; no registered migration agent can guarantee a result (Code of Conduct, Migration Agents Regulations). Keshab Chapagain, MARN 1576536.