In a post on X on Tuesday, UAE’s ministry of foreign affairs called on citizens as well as students to verify that they were corresponding with an authentice source before responding.

The post added that the scammers could ask for payment in the name of university admissions and warned people not to pay to an unverified account.

The ministry also identified a helpline (0097180024) that citizens could use to report any such suspicious interactions.

Fake websites posing as UAE’s diplomatic missions are not a new scam. In one notable instance in July 2021, a website pretending to be UAE’s embassy in India had to be shut down after multiple people reported that they had lost money.

The scandal had come to light during the Covid-19 pandemic, when many Indian citizens were stuck at home and were unable to return to UAE.

As the lockdowns and travel bans dragged on, the Indian citizens tried searching for help.

The top website that came on Google in India had been built by scammers and was contacted by many Indians trying to sort out their travel woes. The website had even been linked to the Google Map location of the UAE embassy in India.

Although the website posed as professional and intiiated contact through email, it soon shifted communications to WhatsApp where Indian citizens were asked to share documents.

However, the matter was finally investigated by authorities after the external affairs minister took notice of the complaints being filed, leading to the site being shut down.