Pros
Someone from this company called me offering recruiting and training services which would hopefully lead to interviews with companies in the industry that I was interested in. I'm a foreign citizen and they told me that they are recruiting for a number of companies that regularly employ H-1B (US work visa) workers. They pretended to provide a lot of details regarding positions and told me that they would need nothing on my end apart from my resume and a security deposit before they can start prepping me for interviews and looking for roles. I called the customer service number listed on their website and they confirmed that the person I had spoken to was affiliated with OPTNation. After I provided the deposit, they told me that they needed a photo of my driver's license and my H-1B visa. After I provided all of that they then informed me that they needed me to pay even more, for part of the H-1B filing fees (they asked for around USD 3400). This was very confusing to me as (a) it's illegal for an employee to pay for filing fees; there's no clever way to get around this rule (b) why would the recruiting firm need the money, this is to be filed by the employer. When I expressed my concerns, the recruiter kept trying to pressure me to pay and when I insisted that this was illegal, he stopped getting back to me. When I tried to call him on his number the next day (he provided two numbers, claiming one was his personal), a different person picked up both times. She informed me that the person I had been speaking to went on medical leave and that she would reach out to management regarding my issue. After this, I stopped hearing from them completely. I have tried calling all the numbers I can find for this company and no one picks up. It's like they all recognize my number now.
Cons
For some reason, this company is really good at portraying a clean image on the internet including on websites like this. I know I'm not the first to get scammed but it's hard to find any negative information about them on the internet. They might even have a way of removing these reviews but I'll find a way to ensure people are aware of this scam. Everything about the way they reached out to me and conducted themselves was shady from the beginning and I wish I had paid heed to the signs. The first recruiter had a thick Indian accent but for some reason had a very generic-sounding English name. The second recruiter (also thick Indian accent) who said the first one went on medical leave had another generic-sounding English name. This is clearly how they run things. Having the first person take your money and then having a second person come in and blame the first person for your issues in an attempt to implicitly remove accountability. The second person asks you to repeat everything that happened to exhaust you and confuse you.
