Where is my payment? How fraudsters earn freelancers

Where is the payment for the work?

I work in a company that develops websites and their support, and of other related services. We do our work on the territory of the Russian Federation. We do not climb over the hill because there is also enough work here.

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

- Hello, on the Internet you are recruiting copywriters. I responded to the offer from Yulia Yakubenko. I made an order, which I received, but did not receive any payment for it, although I found it on the website. How can I understand this? Does your company with all its employees do this ??? I ask you to give an answer to my message!
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Of course, we did not post any vacancy, especially on the Ukrainian freelancing sites (the important point is that the site was not Russian ). Slightly surprised at such a letter and having a little thought on the topic of whether it was regular spam and whether to respond to it, we still decided to check with the girl for more information on the vacancy and work as a whole.


Having received in response a link to the site with a vacancy ( now it certainly does not exist there anymore ), 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 our company's site, which was flaunting as proof that the company really exists vacancy is relevant. First of all, we contacted the technical support of this site, with a request to remove this vacancy from publication and to 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 fairly quickly. They blocked the account and removed the vacancy, without any special proceedings, especially since the removal request was sent to the email specified on the site placed in the vacancy. This is how good customer support should work.


The only thing that could not be found out was who placed the vacancy on our behalf. The 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 is another country and they wouldn’t begin to deal with this situation for too long and costly.

Then we decided to calculate the scam by other more accessible means. We asked the girl to provide all the information she knew, which at least somehow related to this situation: how to keep in touch, which numbers and telephones used.


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

After some time, the hosting manager’s manager answered us and said that they couldn’t do anything with this resource and provide some data to contact the owner, they also have no right, the only thing they advised us to do is to contact the authorities and write a statement.


Since there was nothing left, we wrote a letter to the only mail we had scammers in which we were asked to contact us, otherwise we would be forced to contact the specialized authorities.


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

Evil does not sleep

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

This review, posted unfortunately anonymously, said:

- I applied to this company in order to order the development of an online store. As a result of the communication, they called me a sum of 40 thousand rubles, and in fact, when the work allegedly began to be done, I was presented with a completely different price tag, which turned out to be more expensive by as much as 30 thousand. They didn’t do their job; I didn’t get any results, but only spent my hard-earned money. Very bad studio, I do not advise to contact them.

As you probably already guessed that we did not take any order, we did not receive any money. We regulate all work performed 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 Yandex maps interface . In it we asked to contact us and provide any documents confirming the connection of this person with our company, we did not receive any answer, but for some reason, Yandex did not respond to our complaint and did not delete this review, although we described the situation in detail.

Most likely the author of this review is all the same people who fraudulently forced freelancers to write articles for them. And after their scam came to light 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 jobs on your behalf. Perhaps right now someone is placing such a vacancy on behalf of your company or even worse for you personally as an individual. Then try to prove your innocence to fraudulent actions.
2. React promptly to all letters sent to your company, even if the letter looks like spam or resembles a set of incomprehensible words written in a fit of anger.
3. Check the vacancies of your competitors for the contact details of your company. At the moment, no one disdain gray methods of eliminating competitors. Perhaps your main competitor is responsible for this kind of job.
4. If you find similar, try to resolve the issue as soon as possible. The longer you ignore such moments, the more likely it is for you to get into an uncomfortable position in front of customers.

For freelancers and those looking for a side job on the Internet:

1. Always pay attention to how you communicate with your employer. What are the ways to talk, how a potential employer responds to a request to contact by phone, a desire to have an interview in Skype or contact in social networks. If you do not receive unequivocal answers or even refuse in such a request, you should know that in 90% of cases this is a fraud.
2. Do not deny yourself the pleasure to compare the contact details specified in the vacancy and on the website of the company that posted it. If there is no website, google the company name and get a contact phone.
3. Even if the contact information is correct, and the company actually placed such a vacancy, specify the name of the employee who posted the vacancy or responsible for recruiting employees. Perhaps the company has never heard of the person indicated in the ad, or it was dismissed 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 specified 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. In most cases, this is how fraudsters work, who then sell your data, and a credit is issued to your name or money is debited from your bank card account.

PS For those who like to politicize everything

The article was written as evidence that there are enough scammers on the Internet who want to eat your time and money. No political sense was added to the article, and those who find it, contact the experts, because you have a craze to stick labels. In place of Ukraine, as in this case, there could be any other country. It is only important the presence of a crime.