My website was hacked by sub-contractor of Freelancer

[65c71845]

I hired a freelancer with excellent credentials and who claims to live within my state to do some mods on my site.   The mods went well.  I asked him if he could do SEO and he said yes.   He then asked me if I could pay him through Paypal due to a financial emergency.   (Up until this point, he had been paid through Upwork.)   I thought it was fishy but, because his work to this point had been very good and because I wanted to help him out, I reluctantly agreed.   I said I would pay him in installments as the work was completed.   I paid him the first installment.   The following day, my site went down and I simultaneously received an email from an unknown person claiming that he had been hired by my freelancer to work on the SEO but had not been paid.    The freelancer denies having subbed out the work and claims that he was hacked.  However, the hacker sent me screen shots of a "work log" to prove that he was hired by my freelancer.  Freelancer expresses no remorse whatsoeover for what happened.    He says he wants to fix it, but I no longer trust him.   He says he doesn't care if I give him a bad review on Upwork.    Any advice?

[prestonhunter]

re: "Any advice?"

You should understand that this is not really an Upwork matter.

This is between you and the freelancers you hired.

Upwork doesn't fix websites. If you want help with your website, then you would need to work that out with those freelancers. Or you can hire other freelancers to help you.

You could also work directly with PayPal, which is the company you used to pay these freelancers.

Most of the potential to be assisted by Upwork was lost when you violated Upwork TOS by making an off-platform payment.

The one place where Upwork would probably assist you is in taking your report about this incident so that they can terminate the accounts of the freelancers who were involved. By agreeing to be paid through PayPal, they committed a serious ToS violation.

[65c71845]

Thanks.  I did find a firm to work on getting the site back up.

How do I contact the powers-that-be to report the freelancers involved?

(Just to be clear, the freelancer didn't "agree" to be paid via Paypal but virtually pleaded with me to be paid that way.  I should have honored my own gut reaction and refused.  My bad.)   

[prestonhunter]

re: "How do I contact the powers-that-be to report the freelancers involved?"

You probably don't need to do anything else.

A Forum moderator will probably come along to talk to you directly about this.

If that doesn't happen within the next 24 hours, then you could use the "Flag as inappropriate" link button on the freelancer's profile page.

[BojanS]

Hi Aaron,

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Our apologies for the delayed response, we've escalated your issue to our team. They will reach out to you with more information as soon as possible and further assist you.

Thanks so much for your patience

[prestonhunter]

re: "He then asked me if I could pay him through Paypal due to a financial emergency."

The original poster clearly understands now that the "financial emergency" mentioned by the freelancer was "the freelancer wants to scam the client out of some quick cash."

I think the client is new and didn't mean to violate Upwork rules. I do not want to see this client penalized for what happened. But anybody reading this thread should understand that both clients and freelancers can have their Upwork accounts suspended or permanently terminated for participating in off-platform payments.

[a_lipsey]

I'm just curious how you expected to leave the freelancer a bad review when you didn't hire him through Upwork? Without an Upwork contract to complete and close, you have no ability to rate/review him. So of course he's not concerned about you reviewing him. 

I'm sorry this happened to you but it's proof again for BOTH sides: if a client or freelancer wants to go outside Upwork (not by paying the opt-out fee) then their intent is to scam you. 

[prestonhunter]

I do not know what actually happened in the original poster's situation.

But I got the impression that the client was using Upwork normally, and even hired this freelancer using an official Upwork contract. And then the freelancer pressured the client to pay him through PayPal, although he had an actual contract set up within Upwork.

Even if that is what happened: Amanda is correct in her points about this.

For one thing: If no payment went through Upwork, then it would be impossible for a client's feedback to appear on the freelancer's profile page.

[65c71845]

Hi. I hired him (and paid him) through Upwork. He then asked me to
pay him for SEO work via Paypal due to an emergency he was having. I
reluctantly (and stupidly) agreed. Read the rest of my post above.

[feed_my_eyes]

---

Aaron M wrote:
Hi. I hired him (and paid him) through Upwork. He then asked me to
pay him for SEO work via Paypal due to an emergency he was having. I
reluctantly (and stupidly) agreed. Read the rest of my post above.

---

I think that we all did read your post; what's relevant is whether your original contract is still open or not, which was not clear from your post. If you already paid the freelancer and closed the contract more than 14 days ago, then it'll be too late to leave him feedback (which might explain why he isn't concerned). 

[65c71845]

I suspended the contract two days ago, upon being hacked. He was
unconcerned because he said he had plenty of other work.

[prestonhunter]

Well... no matter what else is going on... ignoring all matters of payment and ratings, etc...

I can't have freelancers working for me who lead to my site being hacked.

Ultimately, whether it is due to that freelancer being negligent, or incompetent, or intentionally fraudulent, whether it is because he hired sub-contractors or made mistakes himself, I can't allow somebody like that access to my important systems.