Finnish farm names used to sell fake berry-picking contracts

Nearly 80 Vietnamese people were tricked into signing fake seasonal work contracts for berry-picking jobs in Ostrobothnia, Yle reports. The names of several Finnish agricultural businesses were used without their owners’ knowledge.

The victims were instructed through chat applications to pay as much as 1,500 euros for the contracts. The recruiter arranged the workers’ recruitment remotely from Finland and did not travel to Vietnam.

In April, the owner of an Ostrobothnian fur farm began receiving messages from the Finnish Immigration Service asking him to supplement visa applications for Vietnamese seasonal workers. The applications said the workers would pick blueberries and lingonberries from July to October.

The farmer had no intention of operating a berry-picking business.

“Someone used my company to recruit workers without permission,” he told Yle.

A man had already contacted him in 2025 and proposed employing Vietnamese berry pickers through the fur business. The man promised the farmer a commission and said he would handle everything. The farmer cancelled the agreement after realising that he would have had to pay for accommodation, health insurance and value added tax.

Applications continued to arrive throughout the summer. The authorities have not suspected the Ostrobothnian entrepreneur of fraud, and Yle is not publishing his name because his details were used secretly.

“Nearly 80 people were on their way here. New applications were still arriving in August,” the farmer said.

Hồ Thi Duyên, who lives in Vietnam’s Nghệ An province, believed she would be able to pick berries in Finland and earn extra money for her family. She told Yle that 17 other people from her home region had also signed contracts for jobs in Ostrobothnia.

According to Duyên, each of them paid 500 euros in advance to obtain a job. If they had received seasonal work visas, they would have had to pay another 1,000 euros.

The recruiter operating in Finland instructed the workers to deposit the money into different accounts in Vietnam. Such payments, known as threshold money, are illegal sums demanded from people seeking jobs abroad. They are common in the grey economy and in labour trafficking and may be disguised as recruitment costs or fees for arranging a work-based residence permit.

People who pay threshold money often have to borrow the funds. According to Victim Support Finland, when police suspect such payments have been demanded, they generally investigate the matter as work-related discrimination resembling extortion or as human trafficking.

Duyên realised she had been deceived only after visiting the Finnish embassy in Hanoi. Embassy staff checked the Finnish Immigration Service’s system and found that the entrepreneur was not supposed to have berry pickers.

A second Vietnamese jobseeker confirmed the pattern. He and six friends each paid 1,500 euros for fake work contracts concerning the same Ostrobothnian company.

The fur farmer said he felt guilty on behalf of the victims, although he had not taken part in the fraud.

“These are not small amounts that Vietnamese people have to raise to come here for work,” he said.

Several Vietnamese jobseekers and three Finnish agricultural businesses identified the same recruiter. Yle is not naming him because he has not been convicted of a crime.

The man had previously worked with a strawberry farm in southwestern Finland. Svenska Yle met him in June when he was receiving seasonal workers at Helsinki Airport.

When Yle contacted him in September, he denied allegations that he had used fake contracts. He said instead that he had an agreement with the fur farmer to recruit berry pickers from Vietnam. He also denied receiving threshold money.

“I do not know anything about the payments. I have not received any money,” he said by telephone.

The Finnish Immigration Service says the phenomenon is growing.