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When dreams meet digital recruitment scams: Bangladeshi workers in crisis

November 30, 2025

Bangladeshi migrant workers are increasingly falling victim to sophisticated digital fraud schemes that exploit their hopes for overseas employment and better economic opportunities. Scammers use social media platforms, fake job advertisements, and fraudulent recruitment agencies to trap workers who pay thousands of dollars for non-existent jobs, often ending up stranded abroad or trafficked to forced labor situations. The problem has intensified as migration processes shift online without adequate safeguards, with workers losing an estimated two billion dollars to syndicates between 2022-2024, while others are lured into online betting scams and identity theft.

Who is affected

  • Bangladeshi migrant workers, primarily young men aged 18-45 seeking overseas employment
  • 33 Bangladeshi workers who filed a lawsuit after paying up to USD 6,000 each for fake jobs in Malaysia
  • Over 480,000 Bangladeshi workers who entered Malaysia between 2022-2024
  • Over 3,500 Bangladeshis denied entry and deported in the first four months of 2025
  • Approximately five million Bangladeshi people active on gambling sites as of June 2024
  • Female migrant workers (only 6% of migrants, declining due to unsafe workplace reports)
  • Bangladeshi workers trafficked to scam centers in Myanmar
  • Workers' families who have made financial sacrifices, sold land, or lent money

What action is being taken

  • The Cyber Crime Investigation Division of Dhaka Metropolitan Police is analyzing cases (406 cases analyzed from recent years)
  • The Bangladesh government launched ScamCheck in January 2025, a platform using AI-powered analysis to identify potential scams by allowing citizens to upload suspicious links, emails, or messages
  • Fraudulent groups are actively creating fake company pages on Facebook, running ads on YouTube, posting doctored photos on WhatsApp, and operating Telegram groups to recruit victims

Why it matters

  • This crisis represents a systemic exploitation of Bangladesh's most economically vulnerable population, with workers spending an average of BDT 478,000 (USD 3,900) on migration costs—requiring 17 months of average salary to recover, far exceeding costs faced by Vietnamese (2.7-4.5 months) and Pakistani workers. The digitization of migration processes without proper safeguards has enabled fraudsters to operate at unprecedented scale and speed, reaching even remote rural villages and extracting billions of dollars while leaving workers trapped in debt cycles. The fragmented government response, with multiple agencies (BMET, Ministry of Expatriates' Welfare, Police, Bangladesh Bank) operating without seamless coordination, means workers lack a unified system to verify legitimate opportunities. The broader implications include perpetuating poverty cycles, enabling human trafficking networks, and undermining the economic benefits that labor migration should provide to workers and their families.

What's next

  • The ScamCheck platform needs to be made available in Bengali and expanded specifically to address migration-related fraud
  • A single government portal accessible via mobile phone should be developed where workers can verify overseas employment offers by scanning QR codes or entering reference numbers

Read full article from source: Global Voices