The dreams of thousands of Bangladeshi migrants have become a harsh reality -- turning migration journeys into digital traps. Unfortunately, digital platforms that once promised safer routes to overseas work -- job portals, messaging apps, and social media pages -- now serve as the front doors to sophisticated fraud networks.
Multiple reports throughout 2024 and 2025 show that digital recruitment scams have moved far beyond simple fraud into complex operations. Criminal organizations had used fake job offers to lure workers to locations where they were then coerced into participating in further scam operations, creating layers of victimization.
What is more alarming are the pervasive “free-visa” or “low-cost visa” schemes advertised across social media platforms and messaging apps. These target workers’ desperation and financial constraints, promising legitimate pathways to employment that simply do not exist.
In August 2023, a massive “MTFE crypto scheme,” was specifically targeted at Bangladeshi nationals. The perpetrators spread their message through migrant networks using social media platforms. The scheme attracted many Bangladeshi workers by promising large returns on investments. When the scheme inevitably collapsed, victims faced massive savings losses and long-term economic harm.
In May 2025, 33 aspirant migrants discovered they had been victims of an elaborate recruitment fraud scheme. They had paid enormous fees for what they believed were legitimate jobs in Malaysia, relying entirely on information provided through WhatsApp messages and informal online recruiters. Unfortunately, they failed to verify job offers through official channels before departure. When they arrived in Malaysia, they found that the promised jobs did not exist.
These cases highlighted a fundamental gap in digital financial literacy that exposes Bangladeshi migrant workers to systematic digital recruitment scams and exploitation. Addressing this gap is necessary to break the cycle of victimization perpetuated by organized, fraudulent groups across borders.
The prevalence of informal remittance channels is also a symptom of workers' inability to navigate formal digital financial systems safely. Many Bangladeshi migrants abroad usually send money home through unregulated hundi networks rather than official channels, primarily because they lack the digital literacy to verify legitimate remittance services and formal banking systems. The reliance on informal channels also makes them vulnerable to fraud and money-laundering networks.
Workers perceive formal banking and official remittance services as complicated, expensive, and requiring documentation they may not possess or understand. The hundi system and other informal remittance channels often seem more trustworthy because they involve personal relationships and community connections, operating on traditional trust mechanisms rather than digital interfaces.
Additionally, many workers don’t have bank accounts, making informal channels not just preferable but seemingly necessary. This creates a vicious cycle where avoiding formal systems due to low digital literacy leads to exposure to exploitation, which further keeps workers trapped in vulnerable positions.
Most aspirant migrants come from rural areas where formal education levels remain low. Over the past decade, formal education has not been accompanied by digital safety, financial literacy, and the ability to critically evaluate online information. That is why most workers lack the skills to verify the authenticity of online job postings, recognize phishing attempts, or conduct digital financial transactions.
Moreover, the traditional pre-departure training provided to workers focuses almost entirely on the destination country’s culture, labour rights, and basic language skills, with virtually no attention given to digital financial literacy.
Those aspirant migrants leave Bangladesh knowing they should not sign documents they cannot read, yet they routinely engage in financial transactions through mobile apps and online platforms whose terms they cannot evaluate.
Using social media for entertainment is entirely different from understanding digital security, recognizing fraudulent schemes, or safely managing online financial transactions. This fundamental gap in digital financial literacy leaves our workers defenseless against sophisticated scams designed to exploit their vulnerabilities.
Bangladeshi migrant workers are expected to preferentially use regulated remittance services and mobile money features that they can authenticate, while recognizing fake payment requests and cloned payment pages.
For example, instead of transferring large sums to unverified personal accounts, they will insist on documented receipts, traceable transfer routes, and receipts that can be substantiated with banks or approved MFS providers.
Beyond transactions, migrant workers need to know how to verify visas and appointment letters through ministry or embassy portals, how to cross-check agency licenses, and how to spot mismatched logos, scraped testimonials, or pressure to pay through personal mobile numbers.
Most existing initiatives on digital financial literacy funded by development agencies place disproportionate emphasis on reintegration support for returned migrants rather than pre-departure preparation for those about to migrate.
Many programs treat digital financial literacy as a one-time training topic covered in a single session. It fails to recognize that building genuine capacity to encounter new situations and technologies.
Additionally, most programs fail to reach aspirant migrants early enough in their decision-making process, often engaging workers after they have already committed to migration and possibly already paid fees to recruiters.
In this backdrop, ensuring that aspirant migrant workers possess digital financial literacy is mandatory to encounter these evolving digital threats.
The Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) needs to systematically integrate digital financial literacy into the digitalization of the migration process. BMET can incorporate comprehensive digital literacy modules into the pre-departure orientations that all registered workers must complete before traveling abroad, ensuring that every worker receives basic training regardless of their destination or occupation.
Partnering with technical training centres (TTC) also represents another powerful avenue for institutionalizing digital financial literacy. TTCs already provide skill training to workers preparing for overseas employment in sectors like construction, hospitality, and caregiving, operating in multiple districts across Bangladesh and reaching thousands of workers annually.
Integrating digital financial literacy into our existing technical curricula would allow for more contextualized training, with aspirant migrants and participants learning these skills alongside their vocational preparation.
The path forward demands coordinated action across multiple fronts. Grassroots education programs that reach aspirant migrants before they make migration decisions, reformed pre-departure orientations, and ongoing support mechanisms can be accessed throughout the migration cycle.
As a nation, we continue to depend on remittances, and as millions more workers seek opportunities abroad in the coming years, building a culture of digital financial literacy becomes not merely advisable but essential.
The time for action is now, before more dreams turn into digital nightmares and before another generation of Bangladeshi workers falls victim to digital recruitment scams that education could have prevented.
Zulker Naeen is Research Coordinator, FactWatch and Adjunct Faculty, Department of Media Studies and Journalism (MSJ), University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). This article is from an ongoing research on digital and financial literacy among Bangladeshi migrant workers.