In the past two years, advertisements from so-called logistics companies recruiting freight drivers have frequently appeared on job recruitment websites. These jobs share one thing in common: they look extremely cost-effective. Although it is freight transport, there are no threshold requirements for drivers, the promised income is much higher than that of ordinary freight drivers, and the work is easier and simpler. This information has attracted many drivers who want to engage in related work. But what happens after they apply?

The reporter browsed recruitment websites and saw that there is indeed a lot of information about high-salary recruitment of freight drivers across the country. Looking at the application requirements, most only require a C1 driver's license. The recruitment information shows: this job is simple, there is a stable source of goods, no loading or unloading is required, and the monthly income is more than 10,000 yuan. The recruiting companies are mostly logistics companies. Xiao Li from Changzhou, Jiangsu, applied for such a high-salary job at a logistics company called Anda.

Freight driver Xiao Li: 15,000 to 20,000, it feels quite high. I entered my personal information, and before long they called me. He said there would be dedicated staff to find goods for you, every day it's just point-to-point, a guaranteed 500 yuan, and you don't need to worry about the source of goods.

For freight drivers, a stable source of goods means a stable income, so Xiao Li decided to go for the interview. Although he applied to a logistics company, the company was not in a logistics park but in an office building.

Amid the constant flattery and introductions from the company's interview manager, Xiao Li had already begun to picture in his mind the beautiful life after starting work. At this point the other party asked Xiao Li whether he had ever run freight and whether he had his own truck. After learning that Xiao Li was a freight novice, the interview manager carefully calculated the benefits of buying a truck for him. Seeing that Xiao Li approved, he pulled out a vehicle entrustment order contract and asked Xiao Li to sign it.

At the time, Xiao Li only knew that the contract was for him to take out a loan to buy a truck, but this matter was not that simple. Looking carefully, there was also an item requiring the driver to pay money. And the amount they asked for was 25,000 yuan. Encouraged by the people around him, Xiao Li not only signed but also paid the money.

The reporter saw the vehicle entrustment order contract that Xiao Li signed with the other party at the time. The reporter contacted several job seekers like Xiao Li who applied for truck driver positions and found that any driver who came to such a company for an interview, as long as they wanted to take jobs from the company, had to pay fees under various names when signing the contract.

For example, one driver who already had his own truck was asked by the other party to sign a truck franchise cooperation contract and pay a franchise fee.

When these companies sign contracts with drivers, they charge them fees ranging from several thousand to tens of thousands of yuan depending on the driver's individual circumstances. They have to pay before earning anything, and quite a lot at that. Why were the drivers willing to pay this money? Because during the interview, the company calculated their income in detail for them.

No matter how it was calculated at the time, a monthly income of over 10,000 yuan was guaranteed, so for the drivers, paying some money in advance was nothing. So what basis did the company have for the account it calculated for drivers during the interview? The reporter learned the truth from a former interview manager.

This interview manager said that the reason they performed so hard was that as long as they could get a driver to sign, they would receive a commission of 300 yuan. This kind of company makes its money from the various fees drivers pay when signing.

It turns out that so-called logistics companies like the one where this interview manager worked actually have neither warehouses nor a stable source of goods, and the company's main business is very different from that of a legitimate logistics company.

Yang Wenqi, deputy director of the First Procuratorate Department of the People's Procuratorate of Wujin District, Changzhou, Jiangsu: They post recruitment information on major job websites. First, they spend a lot of money to pin their company to the top and package it as a high-quality enterprise with extremely high credibility, so that when job seekers search, this information catches their eyes first.

These people open logistics companies only because using the name of a logistics company makes it easier to cheat money. They rely on tempting recruitment conditions to attract drivers to offline interviews, and once someone arrives, the interview manager performs as hard as possible.

This is a so-called logistics company's script. In the interview stage, it says: start with a smile and a simple inquiry, offer simple praise, and close the distance. On the issue of income, which drivers care about most, the script reminds: focus on the work, calculate income in detail, and give more examples. Looking at this income calculation formula, it is indeed very detailed.

In fact, the normal monthly income of an ordinary freight driver is mostly five or six thousand yuan. The monthly income of over 10,000 yuan packaged by the company made many drivers' hearts flutter.

Besides income, what they care about most is whether the company has a stable source of goods. In answering this question, the company taught interview managers in training: "Tell him that our company is in the logistics business. If there were no source of goods, how would the company make money? So you don't need to worry about that. Besides, we work with JD.com and Tmall, and our company has been around for so long. If there weren't that much work, the drivers would have filled up the office. Could the two of us be having such a calm interview?"

If they encounter a more cautious driver who asks which warehouses are close to where they live, or even proposes to visit the warehouse, the people at the so-called logistics company will search online for a logistics park near the driver and say that there are company-partnered warehouses inside.

The drivers paid the money without knowing that the fees these companies collected under various names already constituted suspected fraud. Not to mention the fees collected under names such as franchise fees, even for the trucks that the companies had applicants buy with loans, these companies had long colluded with loan companies and vehicle dealers, concealed the real vehicle price from the drivers, arranged the maximum loan amount for the drivers, and pocketed the difference in the vehicle price.

A chat record inside a so-called logistics company shows that for a truck purchased by a driver, the logistics company's people worked together with the loan company to raise the original loan total of 119,000 yuan to 125,000 yuan, from which the logistics company personnel could obtain a rebate of 12,000 yuan.

Under such circumstances, would the high-income promises made by the so-called logistics companies during recruitment be fulfilled? In the contracts these drivers signed with the companies, the reporter did not see any content guaranteeing the drivers' income.

Zhu Junjie, captain of the First Squadron of the Criminal Police Brigade of the Wujin Branch of the Changzhou Public Security Bureau, Jiangsu: Looking through the whole contract, there is only one clause that is slightly favorable to the driver, namely that Party A shall ensure a sufficient source of goods during the three-year contract period of Party B. But immediately after that, it says that if Party B does not obey Party A's goods arrangements, it constitutes a breach by Party B.

After actually signing, how did these so-called logistics companies fulfill their promise of a sufficient source of goods? Generally, after a driver signed, the company's dispatcher would contact the driver the next day and arrange work for them. But this work had nothing to do with the promised own warehouses and cooperation with major platforms. It was just some scattered orders that the company's dispatcher temporarily searched for online.

Yang Wenqi, deputy director of the First Procuratorate Department of the People's Procuratorate of Wujin District, Changzhou, Jiangsu: These temporary jobs were assigned to the drivers, and after running them for a day or two the drivers might find something was wrong. What was promised was work for both the outbound and return trips, but the real situation might be that finding even one outbound order today would already be good, and for the return trip they could only rely on luck.

After running for a period of time, the drivers not only failed to make money, but some even had to pay out of their own pockets.

In this situation, the company's dispatcher still kept assigning orders to the drivers. Looking at these goods orders, they were either seriously overloaded or required returning empty, so the drivers could not make money and naturally refused to run the goods. Over time they would go to the company to seek after-sales service and demand a refund. The after-sales script was the last move these so-called logistics companies used against drivers.

After-sales staff Xue of a shell logistics company: He told me he wasn't making money, and I said, how long have you been working now? Some people, after working a few days and feeling it wasn't as good as you said, just rested at home for a few days. That's your excuse. What if the work assigned during the time you rested would have been better? The dispatcher arranged work for you, why didn't you go? If you don't make money, you still have to perform the contract for two full years, and after two years we'll refund your 20,000 yuan deposit.

Under such circumstances, some drivers chose to call the police to defend their rights.

But when the police stepped in to mediate, the company always brought up the contract, accusing the driver of breaching it first, and refused refunds with full confidence.

It turned out that the so-called logistics company's continuous assignment of orders to drivers was deliberately creating a situation in which the company was normally performing the contract while the driver was unilaterally breaching it.

At present, there are not a few drivers across the country who have encountered the same scheme, and they generally face similar difficulties in defending their rights. When more and more drivers discover something is wrong and come knocking again, they often find that the company has already closed down and run away.

In fact, this kind of "scheme transport" has lasted for several years, but because these so-called logistics companies created a formal-looking "process" in their operations, no precedent of criminal conviction had appeared for a long time, and such crimes kept evolving and became increasingly rampant.

In 2021, the police in Wujin District, Changzhou, Jiangsu, received successive reports from multiple drivers who had encountered scheme transport. Their reports pointed to different logistics companies, but the persons in charge of these logistics companies all pointed to the same person, Wang Mofeng.

In just two years, Wang Mofeng, in cooperation with different people, opened 29 so-called logistics companies in 12 cities across 5 provinces nationwide. Police investigation confirmed that what the drivers reported was not merely a simple economic dispute. In August 2022, the police in Wujin District, Changzhou, arrested multiple criminal suspects, and the Wujin District Procuratorate assisted the investigative authorities in quickly clarifying the hierarchical structure and criminal method characteristics of the criminal gang. Investigation found that the gang had defrauded 1,026 victims in Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places, with the amount involved exceeding 23 million yuan. In September 2023, the Wujin District Court of Changzhou held a trial of the case and ultimately sentenced the criminal gang for fraud. Among them, the principal culprit Wang Mofeng was sentenced to 15 years in prison and fined two million yuan.

Zhao Rong, director of the First Procuratorate Department of the People's Procuratorate of Wujin District, Changzhou, Jiangsu: Criminal offenses and fraud offenses mainly have two characteristics. On the one hand, there is the intent of illegal possession, that is, whether this gang had the idea of cheating others out of money from the very beginning. On the other hand, look at the means, that is, whether they concealed the truth and fabricated facts to fool the victims. We believe they had no normal logistics business at all and simply wanted to defraud drivers of their money, so we regarded it as a criminal case.

At present, there are still many such advertisements on recruitment websites, and in various places there are still many defrauded drivers going around defending their rights. In carrying out fraud, the gangs carefully designed schemes and exploited many loopholes. At the same time, the entire scam of the fraudsters also involves recruitment websites, loan companies, vehicle dealers and other parties. Have the relevant parties fulfilled their respective obligations? Or, for the sake of profit, did they choose to turn a blind eye? Only when all parties hold the bottom line can such incidents be eliminated and fraudsters prevented from succeeding. At the same time, drivers should also be reminded to keep their eyes open when job hunting. The more they encounter opportunities that sound especially appealing, with money coming especially fast and especially easily, the more they should think twice before acting.