Theft of source code

[aad04407]

Hi All,

  I'm a small business owner who is also a programmer, and I've been developing my own retail product line for 16 years.

  Over the last few years, business has got to the point where I needed to find some programming help.

  A contractor I hired on Upwork (with a five star rating, over $200k earned last year) has stolen my source code, and created a new website to sell my products.  He changed only cursory UI elements, mostly images.  The screenshots on his website show my exact same UI, except for the images.  He did not bother to change the name of the 6 products he stole, nor the telephone number, which leads to his cellphone, which is how I found out who it was!

  Besides contacting the web hosting provider (Amazon) and Google/Bing, what are my options?  He lives and works in India, and I am in the US.

  I will definitely no longer hire programmers from Upwork after this experience, and only work with local people I can meet.

  I will blog about my experiences, so that searches for this individual and his company show up.  I'll also post about my experiences in my small business/programmer professional groups to warn others.

  Does anyone have any thoughts or advice for me?  Other than seeking a lawyer that is - I know that already and that's in progress.

[petra_r]

So sorry this has happened to you 😞

Presumably you have contacted Upwork with proof already?

[kochubei_valeria]

Hi Mike,

Sorry to hear you had a negative experience working with a freelancer. I see you have already submitted a support tickets with additional details and links. It's already been escalated to the team and they will update you as soon as possible.

[jutta_beinker]

I thbink this might be a case of intellectual property - an area that is very difficult to protect/prove, espacially in India and China. What i would do is inform your selling portals like amazon of this and see will they ban him.

[versailles]

I hired IT people on Upwork for small tasks and I will continue to do so in the future.

I will, however, never hire anyone outside of the EU, the UK, USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. And for anything significant in importance, a video call will be an absolute requirement (to filter out fake profiles with fake locations).

Yes, it's more expensive than hiring people from other parts of the world. Yes, scammers do exist in these regions as well and also, there are tons of perfect people in India and all throughout Asia. Honest and skilled professionals. They suffer from the behavior of the persons like the one who scammed you. 

The fact is that those horror stories are frequent in some geographies for some reason. Regulars on this community see fake profiles all the time here and have learned a lot about them. It's a group of dishonest people who are heaping opprobrium on all Asian developers and this is what triggers unfair responses like mine.

It's a shame, but there is nothing that I can do about it, except totally avoiding some geographies.

[hfspeegle]

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@Mike S wrote:

He lives and works in India, and I am in the US.

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 I think I found your problem.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

@Rene K wrote:

I will, however, never hire anyone outside of the EU, the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand.

____________________________________________________________________________________________

This guy gets it.

[lysis10]

I want to know how a dude with 16 years in the biz didn't know this already. I could write a book on the disasters those people program. At one of my jobs, the team had a wall of shame where we would print out their code and post it to our wall to laugh at.

[hodgesh]

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@Jennifer M wrote:

At one of my jobs, the team had a wall of shame where we would print out their code and post it to our wall to laugh at.

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 What was morale like at this job?

[7201648b]

There's good and bad people everywhere. It's not about the location. Just check and talk thoroughly in the interview to see if you can work together or not.

[aad04407]

Hi All (again),

  I wanted to update everyone and thank you for your responses.  The malicious site is now gone.  It may be that my source will reappear at some point in the future but for now, all is well.

  I'm not sure what led to the site disappearing, but I can say that not only is the domain inactive, but also that Google searches are also no longer returning any results, not even in the "cached sites" links.  If this was Upwork applying pressure, I'd like to know so that I can send them kudos and be accurate in any social media mentions.

To the individuals who responded, thank you and here are my responses:

@Valeria - Thanks!

@Jutta - it's definitely intellectual, but it was also a very close copy of what I was selling (only a banner across the top of the program was different). I downloaded one of the add-ins and some of the components still had our name, and/or were still digitally signed by us.

@Rene, @Heath - Noted.  I think I will try local college interns next, but I would like to point out that regardless of my recent experiences, I still have another Upwork contractor from India that has been working for me for just over 6 years now.  Never a problem.

@Jennifer - I think I was wondering why issues like this aren't more prominent in Upwork's material.  I realize they may shoot themselves in the foot but warning clients like me once in a while would be useful (hence my post about my experiences).  I have learned to be less trusting in the future.  That said, I want to reiterate that this contractor had a 5 star rating, with over $200k in business done last year.  I'm not sure how that could be faked without Upwork's notice. 

[lysis10]

You got to wonder how many people he's done this to. It's probably quite a few clients if he has a history. I wonder if he ever got flagged for something dishonest like a stolen profile or portfolio item and Upwork let him back on the platform. I'd love to see those metrics. how many people with flagged profiles for stolen content who are then allowed back on the platform do things like this.

Your guy has probably done it to several people and he's gotten away with it.

eta: how do you know he earned $200k in a year and not in the last 10 years? Are you sure about that number?