Where is my payment? How scammers make money on freelancers

Where is the payment for work?

I work for a company that develops sites and their maintenance, well, and other related services. We conduct our work on the territory of the Russian Federation. We don’t climb over the hill because, there is also enough work.

One fine day, we receive a letter to our corporate mail from a resident of Ukraine ( any other country ), with the following content:

- Hello, on the Internet you are recruiting copywriters for work. I responded to the proposal from Yulia Yakubenko. I made an order that I received, but did not receive any payment or response, although I found it on a site on the Internet. How do I understand that? Does your company do this with all employees ??? I ask you to give an answer to my message!


Of course, we did not post any vacancy, especially on Ukrainian freelance sites (the important point is that the site was not Russian ). Slightly surprised at such a letter and speculating a little on the topic of whether it was regular spam and whether to respond to it, we decided to clarify with the girl more detailed information on the vacancy and work in general.


Having received in response a link to the site with the vacancy ( now of course it is no longer there ), we found in it a description of the allegedly required work, the contact details of the person who published the vacancy and a link to the website of our company, which appeared as evidence that the company really exists and the vacancy is relevant. First of all, we turned to the technical support of this site, with a request to remove this vacancy from publication and block the attacker's account. We also notified the girl who wrote to us earlier that the complaint was filed, we are waiting for the result with you.


The administration of this resource responded quite quickly. They blocked the account and deleted the vacancy, without any special proceedings, especially since the request for removal was sent to the Email specified on the site posted in the vacancy. This is how a good customer support service should work.


The only thing that could not be found out was who posted the vacancy on our behalf. Support service Work.ua did not give such information, because of their confidentiality. To make a request to law enforcement agencies also seemed like a stupid idea, because it would be a different country and they would not have to deal with this situation, too long and expensive.

Then we decided to figure out scammers with other more affordable means. We asked the girl to provide all the information she knew that was somehow related to this situation: how they kept in touch, what numbers and phones they used.


The girl sent us an email which was indicated in the vacancy and screenshots of correspondence with scammers. There is also a link to the site on which the article she wrote was posted. First, we tried to contact the owner of the resource on which the article was published. There were no contact details on the site, and the feedback form on the site itself simply did not work. Then we decided to find out from which hoster this resource is located, and wrote a request in support of the hoster on legal issues, describing the situation in detail.

After some time, the host manager answered us and said that they can do nothing with this resource and provide some kind of data for contacting the owner, they are also not entitled, the only thing they advised us is to contact the authorities and write a statement.


Since there was nothing left, we wrote a letter to the only available scam mail, in which we asked to contact us, otherwise we would have to contact specialized authorities.


Of course, no one sent an answer to this letter, and we decided not to take any further action ( we would not have received any other results ).

Evil does not sleep

A certain amount of time passed, we already managed to forget about this incident, as one of our employees came across a review about our company on Yandex maps.

This review, unfortunately anonymous, said:

- I contacted this company in order to order the development of an online store. As a result of communication, they called me the amount of 40 thousand rubles, but in fact, when the work allegedly began to be carried out, they presented me with a completely different price tag, which turned out to be more expensive by as much as 30 thousand. They never completed their work, I did not get any result, but only spent my money. Very poor studio, I do not advise you to contact them.

As you probably already guessed, we didn’t take any order, we didn’t receive any money. We regulate all performed work on paper, draw up contracts and TK. And we accept payment by bank transfer to a bank account.

We made a request to the author of the review, through the interface of Yandex maps . In it we asked to contact us and provide any documents confirming the relationship of this person with our company, we did not receive any response, but Yandex for some reason did not respond to our complaint and did not delete this review, although we detailed the situation.

Most likely the author of this review is all the same people who, by fraudulent methods, forced freelancers to write articles for them. And after their scam was revealed and they could no longer make a profit, they decided to ruin our reputation with such primitive and ugly methods.

Do not be surprised if we find the same reviews and vacancies on other resources.

Conclusion

For companies:

1. Browse search engines and other sites for vacancies on your behalf. Perhaps right now someone is posting such a vacancy on behalf of your company or even worse than you personally as an individual. Then try to prove your innocence in fraudulent activities.
2. Respond promptly to all letters sent to your company, even if the letter looks like spam or resembles a set of obscure words written in a fit of anger.
3. Check the vacancies of your competitors for contact details of your company. At the moment, no one disdains gray methods of eliminating competitors. Perhaps your main competitor is responsible for such vacancies.
4. If you find this, try to resolve the issue as soon as possible. The longer you ignore such moments, the more likely you are to get into an uncomfortable position in front of customers.

For freelancers and those looking for part-time jobs on the Internet:

1. Always pay attention to how communication is with the employer. What are the ways of a conversation, how does a potential employer respond to a request to contact by phone, a desire to be interviewed on Skype, or to contact social networks. If you get ambiguous answers or even refuse such a request, be aware that in 90% of cases it is a fraudster.
2. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of comparing the contact details indicated in the vacancy and on the website of the company that posted it. If there is no site, google the name of the company and get a phone for communication.
3. Even if the contact information is correct, and the company actually posted such a vacancy, specify the name of the employee who posted the vacancy or is responsible for recruiting employees. Perhaps the company has never heard of the person indicated in the announcement, or else they fired him and in this way he / she decided to take revenge and make money on it.
4. Never send your passport data, photocopies and other information to the email indicated in the vacancy. Even if you are promised to be registered as an employee and for this you need to send your data, do not believe it. In most cases, scammers work this way, who then sell your data, and a loan is issued in your name or money is debited from your bank card account.

PS For fans to politicize everything

The article was written as evidence that there are enough scammers on the Internet who want to enjoy your time and money. There was no political meaning in the article, and those who find it, turn to specialists, because you have the mania to stick labels. In place of Ukraine, as in this case, there could be any other country. The only important thing is the fact of a crime.