Yeah, this one seems to be gaining momentum. There's a few other posts about them here as well. Actually, I kept them on the hook for quite awhile, even knowing that they were scam artists. All of their IP addresses indicate that they're doing this out of America. Finally, they sent me an email titled [My Name] is a FOOL. The body of the email itself said nothing except to repeat prior information about the need for me to hurry up and pay for my visa, even though I told them I wasn't interested until August of September, as I'm currently under contract. They never directly responded to that.

Teachers considering teaching abroad should be more and more careful. In the past, a carefree attitude regarding teaching overseas may have been okay with only a few minor pitfalls now and then; however, the EFL business has become lucrative enough that the scam artists are coming out of the walls. As has been said here repeatedly, they're rodents who prey on the unsuspecting. In this case the unsuspecting are those with high ideals but little in the way of inclination to do the necessary research in order that they will not fall victim to such rodents.

As for research, TESOL schools should be more reality based. That is, they should add to their curriculum a few seminars about how to avoid the scam artists. In addition, they should supply information about websites such as this one that include warnings.

In regards to this particular job offering, a little research revealed the following:

United States IP addresses
TK - the email address ending - is a New Zealand based company. All government emails in the UAE end in "ae."
Labor laws in the UAE stipulate that the cost of visas for foreigners employed in the UAE shall be borne by the employer.
An obvious "need" to get this done as quickly as possible.

Any of these should be a warning light. Unfortunately, many people operate on trust. Con artists know that. Stated simply, though, in this business one should be highly suspicious. Volumes could be written about the scams being perpetrated on the unsuspecting.

State Departments need to step up to the plate also. You can find diplomatically stated warnings about the EFL business in certain countries on State Department websites, but generally those warnings are watered down.

Finally, though, the responsibility lies with the individual. It's easy for many of us to now warn of these things because we learned it the hard way. New teachers, however, should cast off their Pollyanna attitudes right away and make sure they know exactly what they're getting into before making any plans.The above scam is fairly harmless compared to suddenly finding yourself in a foreign country facing the following: no language skills, living in a rat and roach infested apartment, teaching in a dank, unheated and smelly classroom, unpaid, working on an illegal visa, shuttled from job to job, flimsy schedules that have you working split shifts and never knowing when you have a day off, finding out your pay - when it's paid - is not what you were promised, finding out your pay is half of what you should be making, bad plumbing, dangerous electrical setups, leaky gas (almost killed me once), administrators who know nothing about education. The list goes on, but the beautiful thing is that you can avoid all of this, or most of it anyway, if you do a lot of RESEARCH.