Writing competition: Write about scammers - Scammers in the legalization of documents in Venezuela

I work as a teacher in a university in the state, and the monthly salary that I earn; I cannot afford to buy food for three days. This is why I have had to look for another income to improve my quality of life. Thanks to Steemit, until today, I have been able to cover many of the expenses of my house, however, the problem in Venezuela is not only the scarcity and the overpricing in food, it is the lack of medicines, and it is the insecurity that we live in daily, among many other things.

My co-workers, childhood friends and I have the same idea of many, of leaving the country to provide a better future for our children; we have always wanted to legalize our personal documents, so that our academic preparation is recognized outside, in the event that we have to leave the country. The procedures for this are very cumbersome due to the number of people who are doing it and the way to streamline the process is paying management people who are responsible for doing it.

We were looking for a responsible person and recommended by some known person, then we were introduced to Maria (fictitious name), a lady who had processed Miguel's documents (fictitious name) and that he never had any inconvenience abroad. That is why she gave us confidence and we hired her, she charged 500.000 Bolivares per document at the time, which for us (my husband and I) was a lot of money, however we decided to go and after completing it pay for the work. Others of my partners who were more in a hurry than me, paid in advance because they already had a date to travel.

The legalization of documents is done through different ministries. The original documents must be signed by the highest authority of the respective institution, plus they must have a stamp corresponding to the procedure. After the legalization, an apostille must be used to authenticate the documents for use abroad.

All these procedures began their process, while my friend paid in advance, Mrs. Maria to the delivery of documents, we always trust her because everything happened with normal totality. Until one day, one of my friends who was in Chile, he realized that most of the documents were false, he was delivering them without the validation code that they contain in the back and that is used to verify by the website if the document is legal.

After this, we called Mrs. Maria at all times but she never answered the phone and when we went to look for where she lived, she had already moved. She stayed with some of my documents because I was going to start processing my own. The worst of all is that in addition to stealing the money took away my original papers that cost so much effort to have them.