AI high-salary internal referral fake internship scam: a recruitment trap that charges high fees under the guise of facilitation payments and pre-employment training

Who Gets Targeted

Victims are mostly fresh graduates or young job seekers looking to switch careers into popular AI-related roles. Facing severe employment pressure, they are eager to obtain high-paying, impressive-sounding cutting-edge technology jobs. Lacking industry knowledge and social experience, job seekers are highly susceptible to scammers' carefully crafted customized scam websites, fake internal referral slots at big tech companies, and arranged fake internship locations. Driven by anxiety, they often blindly pay high internal referral facilitation fees or are forced to take on heavy training loans, with their psychological weaknesses precisely exploited.

骗局怎么运作

• Fraud gangs post high-paying, low-threshold AI-related positions on major online recruitment platforms, such as AI comic-drama creators and AI automated livestream commerce operators, claiming no experience is needed, that they will teach everything, and that it is easy to earn over 10,000 yuan a month; they use big data to precisely target fresh graduates in urgent need of employment and young job seekers seeking career changes.
• Scammers impersonate employees or internal executives of well-known internet companies, claiming to control scarce internal referral slots at big tech firms, but require job seekers to pay facilitation fees ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan. To increase credibility, they build customized scam websites that impersonate the official websites of well-known companies and even arrange fake interviewers to conduct multiple rounds of seemingly rigorous online interviews.
• After the job seeker passes the fake interview, the fraud gang uses pre-employment training, obtaining qualifications, or purchasing professional equipment as excuses to demand training fees ranging from nearly 10,000 to tens of thousands of yuan. If the job seeker cannot pay, they induce them to take out training loans through designated third-party installment loan platforms, orally promising that the loan will be offset by generous wages after starting work.
• After signing a fake employment agreement, the fraud gang arranges for the job seeker to work at a fake internship location. These so-called internship sites are usually temporarily rented co-working spaces, and the work content is mostly basic low-paid traffic-boosting tasks or simple operations with no technical content, completely unrelated to the promised core high-paying AI R&D or operations positions.
• When the job seeker finishes the short fake internship, the scammers forcibly dismiss them under absurd reasons such as serious failure to meet assessment standards, early project termination, or violation of internal internship discipline, while pocketing the previous facilitation fees and high training fees. If the job seeker tries to defend their rights and demand a refund, the other party often refuses based on the signed agreement clauses or simply disappears.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Recruitment ads claim that anyone with zero foundation can be guaranteed a job and can easily learn AI for high pay, offer salaries far above normal industry standards, and explicitly state that no professional skills, résumé, or relevant work experience is needed to directly join a core technical position.
• 🚩 The interview process is unusually simplified or deliberately arranged at an informal office location; interviewers barely assess the job seeker's actual professional abilities and instead focus the conversation on requiring the purchase of expensive internal training courses or payment of internal referral guaranteed-pass fees.
• 🚩 Before onboarding, job seekers are required to sign a training agreement containing high liquidated damages clauses, or are forced to use a specific third-party financial lending platform to arrange installment payments for so-called pre-employment practical training fees.
• 🚩 The so-called referrer claims to control special slots at big tech companies, asks to communicate by adding a personal WeChat account, refuses to communicate through the recruitment platform's official channels or a company's official domain email, and constantly urges the job seeker to transfer money quickly so the referral slot does not become invalid.
• 🚩 The actual internship company entity is seriously inconsistent with the well-known company name advertised during recruitment; the actual office address changes frequently or is a temporarily rented shared desk, and the tasks assigned after onboarding have nothing to do with the previously promised high-tech position.

真实案例

• In April 2026, according to Sina Tech, many job seekers encountered AI comic-drama creator recruitment traps on online recruitment platforms; the other party required them to pay 2,000 yuan in tuition first and claimed that making AI comic-dramas could earn 100,000 yuan a month, but in reality after paying they only received crude basic tutorials and could not achieve any profitable monetization.
• In August 2026, according to Tencent News, police in multiple places busted a fake-work scam gang and arrested 11 people. The gang collected high facilitation fees, conducted fake multiple rounds of interviews, signed fake employment agreements with job seekers, and arranged victims to work at fake internship locations, creating the illusion of onboarding before dismissing them to defraud them of money.
• In March 2026, a Beijing Daily website investigative report showed that multiple victims were attracted by high-salary recruitment information for AI automated livestream commerce; they paid nearly 10,000 yuan in tuition to attend so-called pre-employment practical training, but in the end only earned a meager 100 yuan in commissions, failed to join the promised high-salary position, and instead took on heavy installment loan debt.
• In February 2026, China Youth Daily reported a typical recruit-then-train fraud case released by the Supreme People's Court. The defendant, using a legitimate company as a front, falsely claimed cooperation with well-known enterprise platforms and used fake part-time income screenshots to lure job seekers into purchasing online courses for onboarding training, defrauding a total of 22 million yuan in tuition; the principal offender was sentenced to a heavy penalty for fraud by the Shanghai Songjiang District People's Court. (Source: https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260226A03G7H00)
• In August 2026, according to CCTV News republished by Hangzhou Daily, Beijing police cracked a fake recruitment fraud case; the gang collected high facilitation fees and organized fake multiple rounds of interviews, signed fake employment agreements with job seekers, then arranged them to work at fake internship locations to create the illusion of onboarding. All 11 gang members were arrested by the Chaoyang Branch of the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau. (Source: https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260809A060WL00)

Official Stance

• On May 15, 2026, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Cyberspace Administration of China, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly issued a risk alert, warning against recruitment traps such as recruit-then-train schemes and training loans, stressing that no enterprise should charge job seekers any fees during the recruitment process.
• On March 31, 2026, Xinhua Net published an investigative report titled 'High-Salary Internal Referrals Hide Traps: Recruit-then-Train Scams Target Job Seekers,' exposing chaos in the online recruitment market and reminding job seekers to beware of tricks that use high-salary AI positions as a cover for training fees and internal referral fraud.
• On February 26, 2026, the Supreme People's Court released typical cases of recruitment-to-training fraud, clearly stating that inducing job seekers to pay training fees or internal referral fees under the guise of recruitment can constitute the crime of fraud, and judicial authorities will severely crack down in accordance with the law to maintain employment order.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Job seekers should verify enterprise qualifications through formal recruitment channels, focusing on checking their business licenses and recruitment authorization documents, and must not easily trust internal referral slots at big tech companies sent by strangers through unofficial channels or highly tempting high-salary, low-threshold promises given via personal WeChat.
• ✅ Before onboarding, be sure to confirm the actual work content and compensation structure. Anyone requiring job seekers to pay clothing fees, medical examination fees, training fees, internal referral facilitation fees, or to mandatorily arrange installment loans before formal onboarding should be immediately refused, and all job application processes should be resolutely terminated.
• ✅ Carefully verify the authenticity of the interview and office environment, and check the actual office address through the company's official website or public phone number. If the actual work content is found to be seriously inconsistent with the recruitment promise or the company frequently changes temporary workstations, evidence should be preserved immediately and one should get away as soon as possible.
• ✅ If already induced to sign an installment loan agreement or a high-fee training contract, do not passively compromise; immediately collect chat records, transfer receipts, and contract documents to report to the local public security organ or complain to the labor inspection department, and seek professional legal aid when necessary to apply to rescind the contract.