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dennis-dup
Community Member

Suspicious client

I have this client who hired me for an hourly job. After week one, his contract was suspended and was put on hold, yet requested me to continue working on his tasks. I asked him about it and he offered to pay me directly to Paypal. I refused. Then he suggested to hire me on another contract to an account belonging to his friend so he sent me another link to apply to where he hired me. The details of the client on the new contract was basically the same person but from a different country.

 

After working for a few hours in his new contract, it also went on hold due to payment issues. The same thing as before, he asked me to continue working and that he would pay me directly to PayPal and that I do not have to worry about payment. Once again I declined. Then he asks me to apply yet again to this other job post of an account belonging to this other friend. Looking at the job details, it's an account by someone from yet again another country. I cannot see the client details before applying but I do not want to go about with this as it's starting to look very suspicious. I will stress that all this time I am basically patient with the client because I have it in my interest to see the project through, but it's looking very grey.

8 REPLIES 8
tlbp
Community Member

If you continue to agree to this client's creative ways for you to get paid, you'll be suspended next. It is very likely that Upwork won't pay for any of the hours on the second contract since you and the client colluded to circumvent the suspension. The client is not able to pay you. Stop working for them. That's what it means when Upwork suspends a contract. 

lysis10
Community Member

You keep this up and Upwork is going to suspend your account and start snooping your transactions thinking something is going on between him and  you. If you used tracker, you'll get paid but if there is a link between those three client accounts, I'd be worried that Upwork will get suspicious. If this client isn't paying Upwork, put a couple brain cells together and try to think about the big picture. You think Upwork wants to keep shelling out money to you when you can't even figure out when to stop working for a scammer?

This particular client has dozen of freelancers hired on all of these three accounts(assuming they are just three) and a great feedback score. It'd be difficult to assume immediately that it's a scammer.


Dennis N wrote:

This particular client has dozen of freelancers hired on all of these three accounts(assuming they are just three) and a great feedback score. It'd be difficult to assume immediately that it's a scammer.


The first time, yes. But then you let him hire you again, suspended again, and now you really have to ask the question if you should do it a third time. It's the same guy every time, and if he's getting suspended due to non-payment, you should be really cautious or you're about to be the next screamer on here complaining that Upwork put their financial transactions on hold for two weeks and you're innocent and yadda yadda.

I have had many great clients who ran into a problem with their payment methods temporarily and had a contract suspended temporarily.

 

Once.

 

When a client repeatedly had their contracts suspended multiple times in a row, then something fishy going on. The client is not a little orphan I adopted and need to protect. They need to figure out how to pay for their freelancers with real credit cards that don't give Upwork headaches.

 

I'm not sticking around for this. Too risky.

 

I could end up working many hours only to have the money clawed back because the credite cards were stolen, or the client was messing around with chargebacks, or who knows what. So I agree with the other posters. I don't care how good the client's history looks. I'm going to politely decline any more work for this client.

What I'm curious about is whether there are any safeguards against clients circumventing Upwork policy against creating multiple accounts by creating new accounts for supposed friends that are essentially duplicates of the original account?

 

 

__________________________________________________
"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
tlbp
Community Member

Probably used one of their other stolen credit cards. But hey, the new guy says the client who's been suspended twice might not be a scammer so I'm sure it'll work out fine. 

Obviously, I was not going to accept to work with this client anymore. A big reason as to why I shared this mostly is because the client is actively working with a tone of other freelancers. The job post I am being directed to apply has over 50 proposals, meaning this doesn't really end with me if it's a scammer. Why I wouldn't rule out immediately he is a scammer also is because, on his second account, it was reinstated once before I could work, then after a few days, it got suspended again. As a freelancer, it would be hard to tell what is going on and mostly I am withdrawing because it's quite unprofessional to work in this manner. 

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