Short answer. When it is committed against three or more persons. Article 38 provides that illegal recruitment is deemed committed in large scale if committed against three or more persons individually or as a group, and that illegal recruitment in large scale is an offence involving economic sabotage.
What the law says
Illegal recruitment is deemed committed in large scale if committed against three (3) or more persons individually or as a group.
Labor Code, Article 38 — Illegal Recruitment Defined. Read the full provision →
Three victims, counted on the recruiter's side
The number that matters is the number of people recruited against, not the number of recruiters. One person acting alone can commit illegal recruitment in large scale, and often does — the same misrepresentation repeated to a stream of applicants. The clause says individually or as a group, which forecloses the obvious argument that three people dealt with separately, on different days and unaware of each other, are three unrelated incidents rather than one large-scale offence. They can be counted together.
Why the classification changes everything
Illegal recruitment when committed by a syndicate or in large scale shall be considered an offense involving economic sabotage. That phrase is not decorative. Economic sabotage is the law's way of saying this is not merely a fraud against individuals but harm to the country's labour system, and it carries the heaviest treatment the recruitment provisions provide for. The practical consequence for someone deciding whether to come forward is that the scale of the operation is part of the offence, so what other applicants experienced is relevant to your case, not a distraction from it.
Large scale and syndicated are different tests
Both lead to the economic sabotage classification, and they are frequently confused. Large scale counts victims — three or more people recruited against. Syndicated counts perpetrators — a group of three or more conspiring or confederating with one another. A case can be one, the other, or both: three recruiters working together on two applicants is syndicated but not large scale; one recruiter with thirty applicants is large scale but not syndicated. Being clear about which you are describing keeps a complaint from being read as an exaggeration.
Find the others
If you suspect there were more, the useful step is to establish it rather than assume it. Applicants recruited by the same person often share a training centre, a chat group, a departure batch or a common contact, and their receipts and messages will show the same pattern of collection. Each of them holds their own proof. Keep your own record complete — dates, amounts, the advertisement or message that reached you, the names used — because the count is built out of individual accounts that match.