AI Mock Interview High-Fee Bribery Scam: Using Expert Reviews and Offer Guarantees as Bait to Lead Victims into Fake Interviews, Fake Agreements, and Fake Internships

Who Gets Targeted

The main victims are recent graduates, overseas returnee students, and career changers, especially young people who lack social experience and are eager to obtain offers from well-known companies during the autumn and spring recruitment seasons. Their psychological vulnerabilities include an admiring obsession with Big Tech positions, unfamiliarity with interview processes, blind trust in AI-assisted job-search tools, and a shortcut mentality of 'paying for opportunities.' After sales scripts create a sense of scarcity and urgency, victims often neglect qualification verification and remain unwary of forged offer agreements and internship arrangements.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: On recruitment platforms and social channels, they use 'AI mock interviewer,' 'offer guarantee class,' and 'ratings from current mentors at well-known companies' as selling points, using 9.9-yuan trial classes or 99-yuan assessment reports as low-threshold lead-generation entry points. They claim that senior HR professionals or Big Tech interviewers provide manual feedback, but actually funnel job seekers into private-domain communities and one-on-one scripted sales scenarios.
• Step 2: In the trial session, they deliberately give low scores and issue templated comments such as 'flawed logical expression' and 'insufficient job fit,' creating anxiety that job seekers will not get an offer unless they pay for expensive supplementary coaching, then pitch thousands-to-tens-of-thousands-yuan 'AI one-on-one interview coaching packages' or 'annual internal-referral cards.'
• Step 3: After charging high fees, the so-called expert review is replaced by scripts and generic templates automatically generated by large AI models. The service provider has no actual currently employed interviewers. The review reports job seekers receive are mostly AI-repackaged content, neither targeted nor monitored for progress, while the contract uses clauses such as 'results not guaranteed' to evade liability.
• Step 4: To keep job seekers hooked and continue escalating fees, the service provider dangles promises such as 'guaranteed offers' and 'internal slots,' demanding additional payments of tens of thousands of yuan as 'bribery fees' or 'resource fees,' forging offer letters and fake agreements, and even arranging for victims to work at fake 'internship locations' to create the illusion of having been hired.
• Step 5: When job seekers discover that the position does not exist, the company is unreachable, or the internship is unpaid and has no contract, the agency stalls on refunds using reasons such as 'personal ability does not meet standards' or 'the process was not completed,' or simply shuts down the entity and absconds. Victims have difficulty defending their rights; some cases involve chains of operations by more than 20 shell companies.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Claiming 'guaranteed offers' or '100% placement at Big Tech,' or charging under the labels of 'internal slots' and 'internal referral resources,' while refusing to put in writing refund clauses for failure to meet standards and liability for breach of contract.
• 🚩 The so-called interviewers and experts show only blurry profile photos, aliases, or social media nicknames, making their actual current employment impossible to verify; when asked for an employee badge or background-check authorization, they evade by citing 'confidentiality.'
• 🚩 The service content mainly consists of AI-generated generic template scripts and cookie-cutter review reports, lacking in-depth follow-up questions and line-by-line comments tailored to the position and resume.
• 🚩 The fee chain is tiered and vaguely labeled, with multiple payment stages such as 'assessment fee,' 'coaching fee,' 'expedited fee,' 'bribery fee,' and 'resource fee'; the corporate account is unclear or payments are made to personal accounts.
• 🚩 Offer letters and internship arrangements cannot be matched when checked through official company channels; internship locations are co-working spaces or temporary offices, with no formal onboarding process or labor contract.

真实案例

• According to a Tencent News report on August 9, 2026, a scam defrauded people by charging high 'bribery fees,' conducting fake interviews, signing fake agreements with job seekers, and arranging for them to work at fake 'internship locations'; police have arrested 11 people. (Source: https://news.qq.com/rain/a/20260809A060WL00)
• According to public reporting by NetEase Subscription, a paid internship scam involved more than 20 shell companies, defrauded over 5,000 students, and involved more than 24 million yuan. (Source: https://www.163.com/dy/article/L1G662300530IU8N.html)
• According to a Fujian Legal Network report on August 7, 2026, some intermediaries pushed high-priced paid internal referral services, but the internship experience job seekers bought at a high price was too risky to put on their resumes, and the services were said to contain hidden traps.
• In August 2026, the cybersecurity department of the Yantai Public Security Bureau in Shandong uncovered a criminal den that posted fake recruitment information and drove traffic to job-seeking scams. Ten people were criminally detained in accordance with the law, and it has been ascertained that 106 people were defrauded, with the amount involved reaching more than 10 million yuan. (Source: https://www.ithome.com/0/995/877.htm)

Official Stance

• In 2026, BOSS Zhipin officially broke down a new type of 'recruitment-to-training' scam, warning that charging high tuition under the guise of AI training and mock interviews and promising high income and senior positions carries risks.
• In 2026, CCTV exposed chaos in college application consulting and job-seeking intermediaries, noting that paying several thousand yuan for AI solutions that could have been generated for free, forging identities, and repackaging AI content are suspected illegal acts, and market regulatory authorities will follow up.
• In August 2026, Xinhua Net issued a risk alert about scams involving paying money to 'get onto the official payroll' or 'land a stable job,' reminding job seekers to beware that it is not 'landing a job' but 'being scammed.'

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Require any 'guaranteed offer' or 'internal slot' promise to be written into a formal contract with a full-refund clause if standards are not met, and refuse transactions with only verbal promises or vague payment notes.
• ✅ Verify the institution's legal entity and the interviewers' backgrounds through cross-checking official corporate recruitment channels, business registration records, and social media history, and remain skeptical of 'experts' who show only aliases and blurry profile photos.
• ✅ During the service, proactively compare results with those generated by free AI tools; if the review report is highly similar to the default output of large models, stop further payments and preserve evidence.
• ✅ Prioritize payments to corporate accounts and request invoices; do not transfer money to personal accounts. If you discover fake offer letters, unpaid internships, or shutdowns and absconding, immediately complain and report to market regulators, public security, and online platforms.