Help - New to Upwork

[Nadia A]

Hello,
I have been contacted for a job as a personal assistant, but the message I received makes me wonder if this is a scam or not.
Here it is what the "client" sent to me:

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

 I have a picture connected to my profile, so shouldn't be obvious my sex? (Besides- my name?!) And why would I re-send packages? in another message he stated those packages are not sent by him but are for him, so why not have them sent to you directly? what is it going on?

Thank you for your advice and time,
Nadia

[Petra R]

SCAM

RUN !!!!!

[Nadia A]

Thank you!
I will try to flag his message as well. 
 

[John K]

Nadia, it's against Upwork rules for a client to directly mail you money. Just report the client to support for offering payment outside Upwork. 

[Nadia A]

Will do.
He already tried to have contacts via gmail and hungsout and I told him that the terms of service require to keep any form of communication through Upwork.
I'm glad I didn't fall for it.

[Preston H]

This is a standard shipping scam.

You can copy individual sentences from this message and do a Google search on them. This "job offer" shows up on dozen scam awareness websites.

This is not an authentic job offer from a person who needs to hire an assistant. This is an established boilerplate scam that the scammer probably didn't even make up herself, but downloaded from a scam resource site.

[Nadia A]

Thank you for the help.
i'm going to flag him.

[Valeria K]

Hi Nadia,

Thanks for reporting. We'll have the job reviewed as soon as possible. Please, check out this post and especially "Safety First!" section for more information about getting started and staying safe on Upwork.

[Nadia A]

Thank you, I appreciate all the help.

[Kathy T]

This is a scam. The items were probably obtained through the use of a stolen credit card or credit card numbers. The client doesn't want to be connected to this fraud outright so he uses you (freelancers) as sort of a middle man. If you're caught you will be charged with ordering and accepting merchandise using stolen credit cards. It won't be easy trying to get out of that situation.

Anytime you hear Google Hangouts, then it's a scam.

Glad you knew Upwork's TOS. Knowing that kept you out of trouble and kept your account active.. Keep reading the posts here so you'll be aware of other scams that go on.