Immersive Fake Job Scam: Tens of Thousands Collected in 'Networking Fees' Before Victims Assigned to Fake Internship Locations; Police Bust Multiple Syndicates

Who Gets Targeted

The victim demographic primarily consists of fresh graduates, unemployed youth, and job seekers looking for stable institutional or public-sector positions. Their psychological vulnerabilities center on three aspects: first, an intense desire for high-paying or state-affiliated jobs lowers their judgment; second, the sunk-cost mindset that develops after being assigned to work at a fake location makes them reluctant to exit easily; third, after signing forged agreements, a lack of legal knowledge makes them afraid to report to the police and defend their rights, leading to a prolonged state of passivity.

骗局怎么运作

• Step 1: Mass posting of high-paying job openings on mainstream recruitment platforms. Job descriptions often plagiarize real company requirements, with salaries listed above market rates to attract job seekers to submit resumes and establish an initial communication channel.
• Step 2: Organizing a fraudulent interview process where interviewers are formally dressed, the venue is professional, and they even ask professional questions to create a sense of legitimacy, convincing job seekers completely. Some syndicates also use AI tools to generate interview questions and evaluation forms to enhance credibility.
• Step 3: Charging job seekers tens of thousands of yuan in 'networking fees' or 'employment deposits' under the pretext of fierce job competition, followed by signing forged employment agreements or internship contracts. The contract terms imitate real corporate templates to further enhance deceptiveness.
• Step 4: Arranging for job seekers to actually report to work at fake internship or office locations—which may be rented workstations or shell companies—where daily tasks are difficult to distinguish from real ones, causing victims to continuously invest time and energy without realizing it.
• Step 5: Terminating the internship after several weeks or months under excuses such as failing performance evaluations or job cancellation, while refusing to refund the networking fees. By this time, job seekers have invested significant money and time, making rights protection extremely difficult, while the syndicate relocates to repeat the operation.

红旗信号（看到这些快跑）

• 🚩 Job postings promise salaries far above market rates with unusually lenient requirements for education and experience, and mass-posted listings cover multiple Tier-1 cities.
• 🚩 The interview location does not match the company's registered address, and the interviewers cannot present valid employee badges or be found in the company's internal directory.
• 🚩 The fee collection stage occurs before onboarding under names such as networking fees, deposits, or badge fees, and requires transfers to personal or non-corporate accounts.
• 🚩 The signed employment agreement lacks an official company seal, or the seal information does not match industrial and commercial registration records, with contract terms including high liquidated damages or training penalty clauses.
• 🚩 The actual workplace has no affiliation with the recruiting company, there are no other regular employees around, office equipment and environments are rudimentary, and locations change frequently.

真实案例

• In August 2026, Beijing police cracked down on a fake recruitment fraud case, arresting 11 individuals involved. The syndicate collected high networking fees, conducted fake interviews, signed forged agreements with job seekers, and assigned them to work at fake internship locations, involving a massive amount of money. Source: Guangming Daily
• In 2026, Yantai police dismantled a high-end employment scam, arresting 22 people with involved amounts of approximately 10 million yuan and over 100 victims. The syndicate's job postings were plagiarized from real companies, contracts were custom-tailored scripts, and the entire process from online traffic acquisition to offline onboarding was completely fake. Source: Sichuan Observation
• In July 2026, in a recruitment-related fraud case, more than 200 people were arrested for participating in so-called 'easy get-rich-quick' paths, which were actually meticulously planned scams where syndicates collected fees through fake job postings and then vanished. Source: Tencent News

Official Stance

• In May 2026, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Security, and the National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly issued a risk alert warning against job-hunting traps such as 'recruitment-turned-training' and 'training loans', reminding job seekers to pay attention to fee-collection stages and fake job characteristics.
• In February 2026, the Supreme People's Court released typical cases of recruitment-turned-training fraud, clarifying that such behavior constitutes the crime of fraud and emphasizing the legal characterization of recruitment fees and fake onboarding.
• In June 2026, the Human Resources and Social Security Bureau of Liuzhou City, Guangxi, forwarded the joint risk alert from the five departments, requiring strengthened supervision of the recruitment market and promotional guidance for job seekers within its jurisdiction.

How to Protect Yourself

• ✅ Verify the recruiting company's industrial and commercial registration information and job authenticity through the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System to check the company's establishment date, business scope, and legal representative. Stay alert to companies with overly short establishment times or mismatched business scopes, and take screenshots of the establishment date and registration authority pages.
• ✅ Refuse any requests for fees prior to onboarding. Regular enterprises will not charge job seekers under the guise of networking fees, deposits, or badge fees. Upon encountering fee requests, immediately terminate the process and retain evidence.
• ✅ Observe the office environment and employee status on-site during interviews, request interviewers to show employee badges or verify identities through the company directory, and inquire for reasons and record responses if the interview location does not match the registered address.
• ✅ Read terms carefully before signing any agreements, paying special attention to clauses concerning liquidated damages, training penalties, and automatic renewals. Take photos of the full contract before signing, and bring the original contract back for professional review before deciding whether to return it.