Fake RLA Registration: How to Verify a Licence Number Directly

Recruitment fraud is usually described as a fake job offer or a cloned government portal. A less discussed variant is more direct: an agency operating without RLA registration at all, presenting a fabricated or altered registration certificate to candidates who ask for proof of licensing. The certificate looks convincing enough to satisfy a candidate who has been told to "check the registration" but does not know the certificate itself can be forged as easily as any other document.

This matters because RLA registration verification has become a standard piece of advice candidates hear repeatedly - check the agency is RLA-registered before proceeding. That advice is only useful if candidates verify the claim independently, rather than accepting whatever document the agency itself produces as proof.

How the Certificate Fraud Works

A genuine RLA registration certificate carries a specific licence number issued by the Ministry of External Affairs, renewable periodically and tied to a specific, named agency. The fraud pattern involves either altering an expired or revoked certificate to appear current, or fabricating a certificate design closely enough that it passes a visual check by a candidate unfamiliar with the genuine document's specific security features and formatting.

Neither version of this fraud requires sophisticated forgery. Most candidates checking for "an RLA certificate" are checking that a document exists and looks official, not cross-referencing the specific licence number against the government's own registry - which is the actual verification step that catches this fraud pattern, and the step most candidates skip.

⚠️ Fraud pattern: A visually convincing RLA certificate is not proof of registration. The only reliable proof is the licence number matching an active, current entry in the Ministry of External Affairs eMigrate registry - checked independently, not taken from the agency's own document.

How to Verify a Licence Number Directly

1. Ask for the specific RLA licence number, not just a photograph or scan of the certificate itself - the number is what gets checked, not the document's appearance.
2. Search that licence number on the MEA eMigrate system directly, navigating there yourself rather than through any link the agency provides.
3. Confirm the registered agency name matches exactly what you have been told - a licence number that returns a different agency name than the one recruiting you is a direct fraud indicator.
4. Check the registration status specifically, since a licence can lapse or be revoked while the physical certificate a candidate was shown remains unchanged and still displays the original issue date.

eMigrate portal is the only authoritative source for current RLA registration status - not the agency's own certificate, website claim, or verbal assurance.

Why This Fraud Persists Despite the Advice Being Common Knowledge

Advising candidates to "check RLA registration" has become such standard guidance that it has, paradoxically, made this specific fraud more viable rather than less. Candidates who have internalised the advice frequently interpret it as "ask to see a certificate" rather than "verify the licence number independently" - a subtle but critical difference that this fraud pattern exploits directly.

An agency confident a candidate will stop at the certificate-viewing stage has little reason to fear a forged or altered document, because the actual verification step - checking the number against the government registry - never happens. This is precisely why the advice needs to be more specific than it typically is: not "check for RLA registration," but "verify the licence number on eMigrate yourself."

What a Genuine RLA-Registered Agency Does Differently

A genuinely registered agency has no reason to discourage a candidate from checking the licence number independently, since doing so simply confirms what the agency has already disclosed. Hesitation, discouragement, or an insistence that the certificate alone is sufficient proof - without independent verification - is itself a signal worth treating seriously, regardless of how convincing the physical or digital certificate itself appears.

This distinction matters for agencies as much as candidates. A registered agency that proactively directs candidates to verify its licence number on eMigrate, rather than simply presenting a certificate, is demonstrating exactly the kind of transparency this fraud pattern depends on candidates not encountering elsewhere.

Checking a certificate takes a moment. Verifying the licence number against the government registry takes barely longer, and it is the only step in this entire process a fraudulent operation cannot fake.

Who Is Most Exposed to This Specific Fraud

Candidates applying through informal channels - a family contact who "knows an agent," a WhatsApp group forwarding job openings, or a walk-in office in a smaller town without an established reputation - face the highest exposure to this fraud pattern, precisely because these channels are the least likely to already have a public track record a candidate could cross-check independently. A well-known, long-operating agency in a major city is not automatically safer, but it does carry a longer public history that makes an outright fabricated registration considerably riskier for the fraudster to attempt.

First-time Gulf jobseekers are disproportionately affected, since the entire verification habit described in this piece assumes a candidate already knows that RLA registration is checkable independently at all. Candidates researching their first Gulf opportunity often absorb only the surface-level advice - "check for RLA registration" - without encountering the more specific guidance on how that check should actually be performed.

What to Do If a Licence Number Does Not Verify

If a licence number an agency provides returns no result, an expired status, or a different registered agency name on the eMigrate portal, treat this as a serious red flag requiring immediate caution rather than a clerical error to raise with the agency directly. Reporting the discrepancy to the agency itself, before verifying independently through other channels, gives a fraudulent operation the chance to produce an explanation or an alternate document rather than confirming the mismatch through a source the fraud cannot influence.

Report a suspected fake registration to the Ministry of External Affairs through the eMigrate portal's grievance channel, which maintains records specifically for this category of complaint and can confirm whether the agency name or licence number in question matches any known fraud pattern already under review.

Building This Check Into Every Application

The verification habit described here works best applied consistently to every agency a candidate considers, not selectively to channels that already feel suspicious for other reasons. A fabricated registration certificate is, by design, built to pass exactly the surface-level check most candidates already perform - which is precisely why it succeeds against candidates who believe they have already done their due diligence by asking to see the document at all.

Treating licence-number verification as a standard first step, applied before any other part of the recruitment conversation proceeds, removes the single largest point of leverage this fraud pattern depends on: a candidate's reasonable but mistaken belief that seeing a certificate is the same thing as confirming it is genuine.

A fabricated registration certificate is one specific version of a broader pattern covered in Contract Substitution in Gulf: How to Catch It Before You Board, where a document that looks correct at first glance conceals a critical difference candidates need to check independently rather than accept at face value.

Browse verified Gulf employer listings on skilledupIndia - RLA licence number verifiable directly on eMigrate for every listing.