Fraudulent (Beware)

[snyderk]

After a 3 hour wasted interview, the fraudulent account offered me a job but then said I needed to send money for some equipment. I contacted the company he said he represented but the company stated they do not hire people online and severral people were scammed. Beware of this fake job:

Job details

**Edited for Community Guidelines**.

• Data Entry

 

• Posted Sep 27, 2022

We need a virtual assistant who is skilled in data entry and using spreadsheet software specifically Microsoft Excel, to enter products into an Excel sheet. Skill set: *Excellent keyboarding skills. *Proficiency in use of Microsoft Excel

Client

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

About the client

Payment method verified

[ArjayM]

Hi Kathleen,

We truly appreciate you reporting this hear and I'm sorry to learn about this disappointing experience you had with a client. I have escalated your report to the appropriate team for further review and take action accordingly if necessary. 

We encourage you to let us know if a TOS violation has happened by using the Flag as Inappropriate option throughout the platform. You can learn more about user reporting here. You may want to check this help article and this thread for more information on how to stay safe on Upwork. 

[8cecdbef]

Hi, I'm new with upwork and I would like to know if I have to pay or deposit the Registration Fee according as stated the selected project via PayPal or Skrill or any payment method suitable for me and they said that it will be refunded once the work is done and that Registration fee is just for the assurance that I will take the work seriously and submit the work always on time. Payments also will be sent to my account directly or will be made via any method suitable for me. Kindly reply to my queries. Thank you.

[martina_plaschka]

Ask yourself this: have you ever been asked by an employer or client to pay a fee to demonstrate that you take your job seriously? That would be like going to your dentist and ask him to pay you a fee so that you know he takes his job of filling your teeth seriously. 

[c4e453ac]

You now know what you didn't know before.  However, many people here expect you to know before what you know now! These scammers prey on new people and they are very successful on UW.

[snyderk]

I had seen that their account was  "verified".  Also, they took the interview outside of UPwork saying they had opted out. I didn't know this was against the rules.  I had flagged the account last night as well.  

[martina_plaschka]

There is no opting out of interviews ON upwork before hire. If they meant they had paid the circumvention fee, that is another typical lie of the scammers. 

[snyderk]

Now the status is:  "his job has been removed from Upwork, so we are no longer able to retrieve your proposal." however this account had several jobs posted so those are probably still active.

[prestonhunter]

re: "After a 3 hour wasted interview"

It was a huge mistake to participate in a three-hour interview like that.

You need to study and give thought to the topic of interview lengths.

[snyderk]

Typically, all those steps would have taken more than 3 hours but spanned 3 weeks. I've been through many interview processes where I was in interviews for over 10 hours (several rounds).  The entire process was 3 hours, including receiving a letter from HR and then follow up questions.  Yes, it was suspicious but I had never been interviewed via Upwork job before.  Filling out the questionaire (interview questions) took me an hour as well.  Trust me, these guys were interviewing 20-30 other people (shown on their profile); they had  a system down.  They didn't ask for money until the very end, after they offered me the job and offered to send me a computer.  Every job in my field has sent me a computer so that wasn't suspicous either.  Thank you for the reply.

[feed_my_eyes]

---

Kathleen S wrote:

Typically, all those steps would have taken more than 3 hours but spanned 3 weeks. I've been through many interview processes where I was in interviews for over 10 hours (several rounds). 

---

That's absolutely not typical of freelancing positions. I usually limit interviews to 15 minutes before requiring a contract to be in place; after that, all discussions with clients are on the clock.

[snyderk]

follow up---data entry is not a job specifically in my field that I mentioned.  I applied to an entry level, part time job here so yes, the length of that interview should have been short.  It has been years since I have applied for entry level work.