One of the best scams I've seen. "Google Hangouts"

[Stephen K]

Yesterday I was invited to interview for a freelance gig – by a well-known international company that I’m actually familiar with. Everything looked on point – they had the domain, email addresses, corporate letterhead, correct physical addresses, even used real HR managers names (I looked them up on LinkedIn to see who I was working with) – everything looks great up until they requested a Google hangout for the interview – then I started to get suspicious.  It wasn’t any one thing – but the language they used and general typing style led me to believe it wasn’t a professional HR manager.  Using “…” in sentences – poor puncuation - asking for information up front – not discussing the actual project – not answering questions about the company.  What it all came down to was they swapped “ei” for “ie” in both the email account and the company name – something a German company would never do.

The scammers are getting better – they look about as legit as one can get.  Be careful out there.

[Petra R]

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Stephen K wrote:

The scammers are getting better – they look about as legit as one can get.  Be careful out there.

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Yeah, they wanted to send you a fake check for fake stuff.

One of the oldest scams on the Internet.

First time I've seen it was 10+ years ago.

They only target new US based freelancers. You'll get lots of those invites.

[John K]

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Stephen K wrote:

Yesterday I was invited to interview for a freelance gig – by a well-known international company that I’m actually familiar with. Everything looked on point – they had the domain, email addresses, corporate letterhead, correct physical addresses, even used real HR managers names (I looked them up on LinkedIn to see who I was working with)

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If you can look that up, so can scammers, so all that is meaningless as you discovered. If anything, I would regard any client claiming to represent a large corporation with suspicion. I've completed over 300 jobs at Upwork without ever being hired or interviewed by a well-known company.

[Preston H]

John is correct.

Most of the money I earn from Upwork is from clients and companies you have never heard of. In fact, most of them don't even have a website.

One of the "secrets of my success" in making money on Upwork is that I never google client names or company names.