The need

Millions of migrant workers are scammed before they leave or have their contract swapped on arrival. A recruiter on social media asks for a "placement fee" to a personal account, and the job turns out not to exist; or the job is real, but the contract handed over at the dormitory pays less, removes the rest day and keeps the passport. Workers often have no way to check, and no one to ask, before they sign.

What exists and what is new

Closest: government and NGO checklists, hotline numbers and recruiter licence search pages, each separate and rarely in the worker's language at the moment of decision. New: one tool that verifies the offer before departure (recruiter licence, employer, legal minimum pay, fee rules, red flags), keeps watching the recruiter until you fly, and then catches contract substitution on arrival by comparing the contract you are handed with the one you were promised, with the reporting path ready.

The data it runs on

Public recruiter licence registries and lists of suspended agencies in sending countries, company records in destination countries, published minimum wage and fee rules (shown as general information with a date), and the worker's own evidence: the chat screenshots, the offer letter and both contracts. Every finding shows its source and when it was checked.

The mission

No one should have to gamble their family's savings on a stranger's Facebook post. Offer Check puts a careful, multilingual friend between the worker and the recruiter, from the first message to the first payslip.

Why people can't resist it

• Instant relief or instant warning. A clear verdict in one minute answers the question that keeps people awake: "is this real?"
• Protection that follows you. The arrival check turns a frightening moment (signing a contract in a foreign language) into a guided one.
• Protecting the next person. Workers forward warnings to cousins and village groups; a scam caught once is caught for everyone.

How it works for real

1. Intake: screenshots and documents read by a vision model (Gemini Flash or GPT class via OpenRouter), in Tagalog, Nepali, Twi, English and more.
2. Extraction: a frontier LLM (Claude) pulls recruiter name, licence number, employer, salary, fees, dates and promises into a schema.
3. Checks: plain code queries licence registries and company records (scraped or official APIs where available) and compares pay and fees with a dated rules table; a fast model (DeepSeek or Gemini Flash) scores red flag patterns.
4. Watch: daily re-checks of licence status and duplicate job ads until departure.
5. Arrival: OCR of the new contract, clause alignment with the promised one, and a plain language diff with severity; Claude drafts the report to the worker's labour office in the host country.
6. Voice: optional TTS reading of the verdict in the worker's language.

Cost per use

One offer check with 3 screenshots: about $0.02 to $0.05. A 30 day watch: about $0.03. Contract comparison (2 to 6 pages OCR plus diff): $0.04 to $0.10. Free for workers, always. Revenue: grants and NGO partnerships, and licensed agencies paying for a "verified by Offer Check" listing after an audit. A solo builder can run 10,000 checks a month for under $500 in models.

Growth loop

Every report ends with "Warn someone going abroad": a short card in the worker's language. Migrant communities live in group chats, so one check spreads to a village. Workers who used it on arrival become the people their cousins ask.

Monthly loop: after arrival, each payslip photo goes into the Pay Log, which tracks pay against the promise and weekly rest days. Every log also updates a shared agency registry, so the next worker checking an offer sees which agencies actually pay as promised.

Risks and guardrails

• General information, not legal advice; every rule shows its source and date; contacts point to official offices and established NGOs.
• Defamation: findings describe registry facts and patterns, never "this person is a scammer".
• Retaliation: reports are drafted, never sent without the worker's approval, and can be filed through an NGO instead of by name.
• Documents are encrypted on device and deleted on request; nothing is shared with employers or recruiters.
• Scammers will test the checker: findings rely on registries and fee rules, not only on wording.

MVP build order

1. One corridor deep: Philippines to Taiwan, with the licence registry and fee rules.
2. Screenshot intake and the risk report.
3. Arrival contract photo and diff.
4. Report drafting with approval and NGO contacts.
5. Add Nepal to Qatar and Ghana to Poland.

People, recruiters, agencies, employers and figures in this demo are fictional samples. General information, not legal advice.