Possible Scam

[kire_t]

Good evening, everyone.

I just got an invite from an invite from a client to join his project at **Edited for community guidelines**, but I am not sure if this is a scam. His profile shows that he is from India, has 26 reviews and a 4.25 rating. The only thing that is concerning me is what he is asking for the amounts paid to people for certain projects. It says he has spent $900 on Upwork, but many reviews are short and paid at low prices for jobs that are big.

After applying to the job, he contacts me and asks me to open a business bank account under my business name as well as a merchant account. He also only wants me to monitor the funds of the account and says he is willing to pay me $100 a day or 10% of the sales from the merchant account I would open under a business name. 

Can I get some advice here?

[petra_r · Accepted solution]

Obviously (!!) you would have to be stark raving crazy to open a bank account in your name and give anyone access to it.

Nobody in their right mind could or would ever, for a second, even think about that for longer than a fraction of a second.

You reported it. Now walk away as fast as you possibly can.

[kire_t]

Already did. I needed the conversation to go on longer so when Upwork investigated, they could see the correspondence, or I could provide more information if needed.

[BojanS]

Hi Kire,

Thank you for reporting this to us. I'll share this with our team for further investigation and appropriate actions will be taken according to our internal processes.

Here's the help article for more information on how to use the flag option found on each job post or message to report any suspicious or inappropriate content. Check out this post for more tips on how to avoid questionable jobs.

Thank you.

[jr-translation]

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Kire T wrote:

Good evening, everyone.

I just got an invite from an invite from a client to join his project at **Edited for community guidelines**, but I am not sure if this is a scam. His profile shows that he is from India, has 26 reviews and a 4.25 rating. The only thing that is concerning me is what he is asking for the amounts paid to people for certain projects. It says he has spent $900 on Upwork, but many reviews are short and paid at low prices for jobs that are big.

After applying to the job, he contacts me and asks me to open a business bank account under my business name as well as a merchant account. He also only wants me to monitor the funds of the account and says he is willing to pay me $100 a day or 10% of the sales from the merchant account I would open under a business name. 

Can I get some advice here?

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If a client is looking for someone who is "honest" and "wants to earn big" it means "naïve" and "greedy".

Why do you waste so much time communicating and share all the information with such a client?