In Libya, con men and scammers in scuba and free diving training have taken over the scene and the public has fallen victim to them unfortunately. The number of these con man who claim to be instructors (free and scuba) without real instructor’s license has become larger than the number of legitimate properly licensed instructors in the country. The public cannot distinguish between the good and the bad or the real and fake and between the honest professional who has earned his instructor’s designation from a legitimate diver-training agency and follows the training standards of his agency. These scoundrels are committing their deceit and fraud with all comfort. The saying in Libya, “making a living” has given license to many individuals to commit fraud despite of their contradicting and violating Islamic teachings in addition to disregarding all ethics and honor of the profession.
In countries that respect the law, honor the ethics of the profession and protect the safety of their citizens, all those who fraudulently represent themselves as dive instructors (in all its forms) face severe legal consequences and may even be put in jail. Regrettably, in Libya fraudsters boast of their deceit and fraud and compete to break the rules and regulations of training in public without shame, care or concern to public safety. The worst types are the licensed instructors who sell scuba diving certifications to these Scammers when they have no role in training or qualifying the trainees at all. They have sold their honor and professional ethics, not to mention violating all their moral, contractual and legal obligations with their training agencies for a quick dinar.
I am in town in Libya now where there are 5 "fake instructors" actively running free and scuba instructions and I am the ONLY properly trained, legitimate certified and dues paying instructor in this town. In the Capital city of Libya, Tripoli, there are about 5 certified instructors including myself and only 3 of us have current status with our respective agencies yet all are actively teaching. Several other not certified individuals are running dive schools (free and scuba) without being certified instructors. Even some of the certified instructors sell c-cards to the uncertified fake instructors to give to their students. One such character is running a summer camp for kids and trains them on Scuba and even runs advanced courses for them to dive to 30 meters yet he isn't an instructor. He buys c-cards from an instructor who is about 200 miles away in a different town without having anything to do with the students.
