Ian Leahy ESLinsider review, submitted by Caitlin.

My ESLinsider TEFL certificate wasn’t accepted for my work permit.

I got scammed by Ian Leahy from ESLinsider, and looking back, I really should have noticed all of the obvious red flags.

I first got to hear of Ian Leahy’s TEFL program from one of his posts in Quora. He came over as being very knowledgeable, and I liked how he was prepared to go out of his way to shine a light on some of the dodgy TEFL courses out there. After a couple of emails back and forth, I enrolled in his TEFL (TEKA) course. The course payment was arranged by wiring the money to his bank account. Ok, a little strange, but this was a reliable person, who seemed completely legit.

The course was OK. It wasn’t worth the 300 bucks I paid, but it did cover a lot of the basics for teaching kids. Despite the not-that-great video quality, and having to manually email Ian my course assignments, I managed to see the course through to the end and I received my TEFL certificate.

I must write that Ian was helpful throughout the course and came over as being professional.

The problems began when I started applying for jobs.

Despite assuring me that he would help me find a job, Ian stopped returning my emails as soon as my course was complete. So the first lie was that he provides job support. He doesn’t.

I eventually landed a job with a school based in Shanghai, China. Because of the COVID restrictions on traveling at the time, all my paperwork went through the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. The plan was to get all my ducks in a row before the new year, and then I would travel over to China to begin teaching after the Chinese New Year.

It shook me when I received the news that my application had been declined.

I went through all my paperwork. Everything was in order.

When I checked with the embassy, they informed me that my work permit was declined because my ESLinsider TEFL certificate wasn’t accepted.

So now I am back to square 1 and need to take another TEFL course, but this time one that WILL be recognized. I decided on the TEFL Online Pro program and checked with the embassy and my school if this one would be recognized, they gave it the thumbs up, and now I’m back on course for an early March start to begin my teaching job. So far, the TEFL Online Pro program is excellent.

I wrote to Ian Leahy, asking for a partial refund of my money, but he didn’t respond.

ESLinsider’s TEFL online is a course that you should avoid at all costs. There is no reason for taking it if you can’t use the certificate.

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ESLinsider Warning.

This is yet another warning about the ESLinsider TEFL program.

ESLinsider is run by Ian Patrick Leahy.

Almost every single TEFL program that I have spoken to has said that Ian Leahy is a public menace.

Essential TEFL Tip!

Are you worried about being scammed? TEFL course scams are becoming more sophisticated!

Protect yourself by reading about the latest TEFL scams in this article:

Online TEFL/TESOL Course Review Scams in 2025

If you are concerned about becoming a victim of an Online TEFL/TESOL course scam, we strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2025:

The 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL Courses in 2025

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Why is Ian Leahy from ESLinsider a public menace?

Here are ten reasons why:

1. Ian advised TEFL teachers to teach in China without a college degree or with a fake college degree. A direct result of this poor advice was the imprisonment and subsequent deportation of some TEFL teachers in China.
2. The authorities in China have placed ESLinsider/Ian Leahy on a blacklist. If Ian were to travel to China, he would be arrested and imprisoned.
3. Ian is accused of fraud- stealing the credit card details of some of his customers and using that money for his purchases.
4. Ian’s ESLinsider TEFL course is not accredited and its certificate is not recognized by any reputable English companies or schools.
5. ESLinsider/Ian Leahy was banned from Facebook (2017 onwards) for shilling his program, spamming, and spreading TEFL conspiracy theories.
6. Ian’s ESLinsider business model has a zero budget for paid advertising and marketing. Instead, Ian writes trash about the main players in TEFL. He does this to increase his online footprint and net new customers this way.
7. Fake reviews. Ian writes fake 5-star reviews for his TEFL program.
8. False identities. Ian has numerous identities online. He uses these to attack the main players in TEFL and uses them to shill his TEFL program.
9. Ian Leahy moved back to the USA last year (from Japan) because his ESLinsider TEFL program went bankrupt. He has spent the past winter working on the ski slopes in Idaho/Montana, and this summer Ian is working at a lodge in Oregon.
10. We tracked down some of Ian’s alter egos on Reddit (fake accounts) and saw that he was asking about how to find under-the-table paid work in either Chile or New Zealand.

The following is a heart-breaking first-hand account of the real-world effects of being scammed by ESLinsider/Ian Leahy.

In the period when this account took place, Ian Leahy was falsely claiming that he was a respectable UK-based recruiter for English teachers in Asia.

ESLinsider scams its TEFL customers and also scams other TEFL programs, accreditation bodies, and TEFL review websites.

Ian writes trash about every single TEFL program, about every single accreditation body, and about every single TEFL review website.

He knows that when he does this, his ESLinsider website shows up in the organic Google search for that particular TEFL program, accreditation body, or TEFL review website.

He then hopes to convince people who are new to TEFL that his TEFL course is worth purchasing.

Trusted TEFL Reviews has always responded to any online attacks from Ian Leahy, by simply using Ian’s words against him.

This Trusted TEFL Reviews ESLinsider article is an excellent example:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2020/02/03/eslinsider-reviews-scam/

Our ESLinsider warning is something that you should take seriously, to avoid being scammed by Ian Leahy.

Many organizations and individuals have issued their ESLinsider warnings.

ESLinsider/Ian Leahy is a menace to the public.

Buyer beware!

This ‘ESLinsider Warning’ article was written by Mia Williams, Trusted TEFL Reviews co-owner.

Read more ESLinsider reviews

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ESLinsider | A Warning for all TEFL/TESOL students and graduates.

We don’t like to issue warnings but there are times when we feel that we have to.

These times are when Trusted TEFL Reviews feels that it is in the public interest to issue a warning.

This is such a time.

ESLinsider is all over the internet.

For those of you who don’t know, ESLinsider is a blog and a TEFL program operated by a guy from Monroe, New Hampshire.

His name is Ian Patrick Leahy.

This is the guy:

In this photo, taken from his ESLinsider blog, Ian Patrick Leahy gives the misguided advice that people shouldn’t bother taking a college degree course.

Essential TEFL Tip!

Are you worried about being scammed? TEFL course scams are becoming more sophisticated!

Protect yourself by reading about the latest TEFL scams in this article:

Online TEFL/TESOL Course Review Scams in 2025

If you are concerned about becoming a victim of an Online TEFL/TESOL course scam, we strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2025:

The 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL Courses in 2025

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Ian is famous in the TEFL world, for all the wrong reasons.

About ten years ago, Ian took a dirt-cheap TEFL course and decided that he could create a better course.

So, he put his skills to work and created a TEFL course which he coined his TEKA course.

To finance the marketing for this TEFL course, he became a prolific blogger, shill, and spammer.

As some TEFL programs have correctly pointed out, Ian and ESLinsider accounts were banned from Facebook because of this shilling and spamming.

If QAnon had a TEFL branch, Ian would be its director.

So many TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies have publicly complained about Ian’s incessant bullying and his non-stop publishing of TEFL conspiracy theories.

Choose any TEFL program or TEFL accreditation body- Ian will have written some garbage online about it.

This was the ESLinsider head office when Ian lived in Japan:

For a while, Ian’s business took off.

He was somehow able to run his business while he lived in and then moved from China to South Korea, and then from Taiwan to Japan.

His big convincer was his blog.

‘ESLinsider’ gives the impression of someone in the know.

The truth is, that Ian has very limited knowledge of TEFL and this has been demonstrated in the teaching videos that he used to upload to his YouTube channel.

It was all about the money.

I don’t think Ian had or has any deep love or attachment to TEFL.

Here is another photo of Ian- also taken in Japan:

Ian went from TEFL program owner to TEFL online teacher.

What happened? Why the fall from grace?

Well, in part, Trusted TEFL Reviews can be thanked for this.

We noticed the growing number of complaints by ESLinsider students.

There were complaints about his customers being defrauded out of their money.

There were complaints about his customers being arrested in China because Ian by then was sought after by the Chinese authorities for fraud. Showing an ESLinsider TEFL certificate at an interview was classed as guilt by association.

There were also complaints about his customers being arrested in China because they took Ian’s advice to buy fake college diplomas.

I’m not making this up, but I do wish I were making it up.

Ian is a menace.

Let’s have another photo of Ian to break up the text in this article.

This one is of Ian teaching Phonics.

The only problem is that he doesn’t have the first clue about phonics:

Someone who does know what phonics is:

So why are we writing this article?

Trusted TEFL Reviews began exposing Ian Leahy two years ago.

And, he DID NOT like it.

He directed his attention away from the TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies that he was destroying online and turned that energy on me and Trusted TEFL Reviews.

His bullying was unbelievable. It was non-stop.

Conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.

He would write that I was the owner of this and that TEFL program.

A month later, I was the owner of yet another TEFL program.

My name wasn’t Mia.

I was a guy.

And on and on and on and on the garbage spewed from his “office”.

What did I do?

I published an article, exposing Ian.

The article became a mini viral “sensation” in the TEFL world and the result was that Ian went out of business.

He moved back to Monroe, New Hampshire, and began working on the ski slopes there.

Of course, that didn’t stop his harassment of me and most other TEFL programs and TEFL accreditation bodies.

It did, however, slow him down.

Ian is currently working a summer season in Oregon, at one of the lodges there.

On Reddit, he was last seen asking about illegal job opportunities in Chile and New Zealand.

Despite his ESLinsider program being dead in the water, Ian still takes the time to spread his conspiracy theories.

My advice to anyone who reads something that has been written by Ian Patrick Leahy from ESLinsider:

What you are reading has no substance in the real world.

It is just the rantings of a desperate man with a conspiratorial mind.

If you think you are reading something written by Ian Patrick Leahy, you probably are.

He always uses the same style.

Screenshots with line markers added- highlight some nonsense connection that he has made.

As long as Ian believes that he can somehow resurrect his TEFL program from the ashes, he will keep on and on and on and on writing about how bad his competitors are and how fraudulent all the accreditation bodies are.

That, in a nutshell, is Ian Patrick Leahy from ESLinsider.

You can Google search ‘ESLinsider’ and ‘Ian Patrick Leahy TEFL’ for confirmation of what I have written.

Thank you for reading this ESLinsider article.

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Read more ESLinsider reviews.

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Is ESLinsider legit?

Is ESLinsider Legit? ESLinsider review, submitted by Todd.

Is ESLinsider legit? The course contains very poor video quality.

I kind of feel bad writing this review, because I think ESLinsider are trying to build up its TEFL course online presence and I don’t want to be someone who comes in the way of that. But, this is a TEFL course review and I need to be objective here.

At first, I had my eye on the ITTT TEFL certification online course (which I later took, btw, and which I was satisfied with). Their website looked professional and there were a lot of good things written about the program. But then, my attention was drawn to eslinsider.com and an article written by its founder, Ian Leahy. In the article, he argues the point that ITTT TEFL shouldn’t be trusted. The reasoning behind this, according to Ian Leahy, is because of their affiliate marketing strategy and because they also clandestinely run xxxxxxxxxx.xxx. Ian Leahy claims that because ITTT TEFL secretly run xxxxxxxxx.xxx, they were able to award themselves a TEFL course award.

How was I to know any better? I just took Ian Leahy for his word and enrolled in his course instead.

I thought, at the time, that I had dodged a bullet.

One of the first things which should have been a red flag was the need to pay the ESLinsider course fee via Western Union. Ian Leahy convinced me that this was how all TEFL schools arrange their course payments. He was very convincing, so I paid and waited, and waited, and waited. After a week of waiting, I got a reply to confirm that the payment went through. All I now had to do was create an account on his school website (https://www.course.eslinsider.com/) and I was good to go.

I followed the instructions and created an account. I was pretty excited by this point to start the course that Ian Leahy had claimed was the “creme de la creme of Online TEFL courses” (his own words, not mine.)

It was then that I realized the huge goof I had made.

The course didn’t have any structure to it. It consisted mainly of random pages of video tutorials, with Ian Leahy taking center stage. The course contains very poor video quality. Two of the videos were actually inaudible, due to the sounds of the children shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs.

No grammar was explained. Nothing like that. It was just a mashed-up series of videos in which Ian Leahy is teaching lessons to children. Below each video, there is a list of questions that you need to answer before you can gain access to the next low-quality TEFL video.

When I wrote to ESLinsider to complain (I was polite about it) they replied that a refund “isn’t applicable” because I started the course. Had I paid via credit card, I would have been able to contact my bank for a chargeback claim.

I decided that it wasn’t worth my while pursuing it anymore after I had complained on Quora and when Ian Leahy incredulously replied to my post that I had never taken his course and that I was an angry competitor. I have spent time reading his school blog and can see why competitors would be angry with him. His school blog is full of attacks on his competition. I can now see that this is probably ESLinsider’s way of winning new business.

Oh, and btw, I did check to see whether ITTT TEFL run xxxxxxxxxx.xxx and I never did find any truth to that accusation.

ESLinsider is probably best avoided. I’m awarding it 2 stars because I did learn something. It just didn’t cut it for me though and I lost a few hundred bucks in the process. The whole experience was just bizarre.

Essential Tip!

We (Trusted TEFL Reviews) have had enough of the few rogue Online TEFL/TESOL companies that have been coordinating a sustained smear campaign against trustedteflreviews.com and managing to scam students by presenting themselves in a more professional light than they are.

You can read all about this scam in the following article:

Online TEFL/TESOL Course Review Scams in 2024

If you are concerned about becoming a victim of an Online TEFL/TESOL course scam, we strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2024:

The 5 Best Online TEFL TESOL Courses in 2024

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Read more ESLinsider reviews

New! Click here for the online TEFL/TESOL international certification course Teachers’ Choice Award winner. International Online TEFL/TESOL course certification at its best.

Verified Online TEFL/TESOL certification course program reviews, ranked in order of customer satisfaction: TEFL Course Directory

TEFL Accreditation Guide | 6 TEFL Red Flags | TTR Home | TEFL Course Special Offers

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