New bottle, old wine
At the beginning of March 2026, Ms. Ly Thi Hong Van (name of the character requested to be changed, born in 1998, residing in Thanh Hoa) is still in shock when recalling that she was defrauded of nearly 50 million VND by fraudsters just a few days after participating in an online job advertised as "easy to make money".
Initially, Ms. Van intended to keep the story secret because she was ashamed and regretted the lost money. However, fearing that more people would fall into the same trap, she decided to share her experience with Lao Dong.
According to her account, one afternoon in early March, while surfing Facebook, Ms. Van saw a post from an account believed to be of a KOL, announcing the recruitment of collaborators to "view YouTube". The post said that the job is simple, just watch videos as required, take a screenshot and will receive a commission of up to 40,000 VND for each video. Daily income can reach 200,000 - 300,000 VND.
Thinking this was a reputable account, she texted to find out. After providing personal information and a bank account to receive salary, she was asked to install the Telegram application to join the task group.
In the group, another account provides detailed instructions on how to work. Participants must deposit money to perform the task, then the system will refund both principal and interest, with profits from 20-80%. For example, if depositing 300,000 VND, they will receive 360,000 VND after about 15 minutes. Initially, Ms. Van tried to deposit 100,000 VND and actually received 185,000 VND. Seeing that making money was quite easy, she began to trust and continued to participate in higher-value tasks.
However, when performing the next task, the subjects continuously asked her to top up more money to "complete the application" before she could withdraw money. In a short time, she successively transferred many amounts of money from several million to tens of millions of VND.
When I deposited 22 million VND, I ran out of money and called my husband to ask him to transfer an additional 10 million VND. When they saw that I had no money left, they even played the role of people on duty to persuade me to sell the motorbike to continue depositing money" - Ms. Van recounted angrily.
In addition to the above case, recently, functional agencies have also continuously warned about fraudulent tricks related to job recruitment on social networks.At the beginning of March 2026, Lai Hoa Commune Police (Can Tho City) said that subjects often take advantage of social networks to post advertisements for "light work, high salary", thereby attracting people to exit illegally.Many cases after going abroad have fallen into the trap of fraud, being exploited for labor, and even related to human trafficking.
Be careful with paying money to receive commissions.
Through monitoring the labor market, Ms. Nguyen Thi Kim Chung - Deputy Director of the Can Tho City Employment Service Center - said that fraudulent tricks in recruitment are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
Currently, it is common to use the form of impersonating businesses or recruitment units to post "light job with high salary", then collect application fees and reservation fees. In addition, there are also online collaborator recruitment tricks such as liking, sharing, product evaluation and then requesting to deposit money to perform tasks, or impersonating brokers to send workers to work abroad to collect fees against regulations" - Ms. Chung said.
According to Ms. Chung, to limit risks for workers, the Can Tho City Employment Service Center has promoted propaganda and provided official job information. The Center has built a specialized management network in 103 communes and wards in the city, directly connecting with officials of the Department of Culture and Social Affairs in each locality to promptly transmit information to people.
In addition, for the need to work abroad, the center also coordinates with universities, colleges and localities to introduce legal programs managed by the State such as the IM Japan program (Japan) or the EPS program (Korea).
According to Ms. Chung, when workers properly access official information channels and go to licensed job service centers, the risk of falling into fraud traps will be significantly reduced.
