Short answer. Yes. Article 13 of the Labor Code deems any person or entity that, in any manner, offers or promises employment for a fee to two or more persons to be engaged in recruitment and placement. No job needs to have existed, and nobody needs to have actually been deployed.
What the law says
any person or entity which, in any manner, offers or promises for a fee, employment to two or more persons shall be deemed engaged in recruitment and placement
Labor Code, Article 13 — Key Recruitment Terms Defined. Read the full provision →
The two-person rule, word for word
The Code puts it as a deeming clause: any person or entity which, in any manner, offers or promises for a fee, employment to two or more persons shall be deemed engaged in recruitment and placement. Deemed is the operative word. Once the three elements line up — an offer or promise of employment, a fee, and two or more persons — the conclusion follows without further argument about what you thought you were doing. The clause exists precisely so that nobody has to prove the promiser ran an agency, kept an office, or described himself as a recruiter.
Why "in any manner" is so wide
The phrase covers the form the promise took, and it was written to be difficult to escape. A message thread, a spoken assurance at a gathering, a post advertising placements abroad, a promise routed through a relative — all are manners of offering. Nor does the fee have to be called a fee. Money handed over as a processing charge, a medical or training payment, or a contribution towards papers can all be the fee the clause contemplates. Whether a particular payment counts is a question of fact, but relabelling it is not by itself a defence.
It is a definition, not the offence
Falling inside the definition does not by itself make you a criminal. What the definition does is bring your conduct within the part of the Code that regulates recruitment and placement — the part that requires a licence or an authority from the Department of Labor before those acts may lawfully be done. The exposure arises from doing the acts without the document the Code requires. That is also why the two-person threshold matters so much: it is the point at which informal job-broking stops being a favour and starts being regulated activity.
If you paid, or if you are the one accused
The record is usually built from very ordinary things: the messages containing the promise, receipts or transfer confirmations for whatever was paid, the names of everyone else who was approached, and any document bearing a supposed employer's name. Keep the originals and the dates. If you are on the receiving end of an accusation, the questions that matter early are whether a fee genuinely passed, from whom, and how many people were actually approached — and whether you hold, or were acting under, a licence or authority. Get those facts fixed before anyone gives an account of them.