One scam I notice a lot more lately is one I think of as "the busywork investment scam." This is where the scammers give someone who's new to upwork a huge sham project that involves a ton of work (and most often this involves the newbie freelancers--who are new to both Upwork and the concept of freelancing itself--starting a project without a contract because they don't realize they need to have one). The project will involve something like translating Moby Dick Van Dyke Van Dick Van Dyke Van Dyke. When the freelancer is finished, the scammer then tells them they need to pay a fee in order to be paid .
Since the freelancer is now invested by virtue of spending an inordinate amount of time diligently completing the monumental busywork project the scammers assigned, they'll often agree to pay whatever ridiculous fee the scammer proposes so that they can be paid for the contract (for example, a registration fee, an ID card fee, or whatever). After they pay the first fee, there will be another fee, and the busywork invested freelancer will sometimes go for that too because they've just invested a whole lot of energy into creating the ultimate translation of Moby Dick Van Dyke Van Dick Van Dyke Van Dyke.
Edited to add: The title wasn't my idea. For some reason the system corrected my title to the one you see.
