Payment sent to Merli prime bank online

[9f676eda]

Hi Upwork Community,

I am new to Upwork, I have started a project on Upwork and finished it before deadline, now for payment this client was asking me to send my work to some tulsaworld gmail i.d and i sent but they replied to purchase a Freelancing card from them which i refused and asked my client to send me payment other way so he asked me to open an account online on merliprimes.com which is some non famous online platform for payments, i opened account and i recieve payment in USD in that online account but when i tried to withdraw it it says to give soem transaction OTP code but there was no option or prompt thats show from where I will recieve this code. so, i contacted their support which says to activate account by depositing USD 150 in account through crypto wallet. I asked client about this he said to deposit the amount which i dont agree as i already have more thn enough money in my merliprime bank account which i opened and recieved money in. I want to know how i can get my money, is this merli bank account is real?

Kindly guide me on this.

Thanks and Regards,

Raja Farhan

[NikolaS · Accepted solution]

Hi Raja,

Thank you for reaching out to us. Could you please clarify if your client asked you to create a bank account and get paid outside of Upwork? If so, please know that you should never get paid or pay someone outside of Upwork. You may open yourself up to scams or fraud, and lose Upwork Payment Protection. A real client will never ask you to give them money to start working, cash a check for them, work for free, or provide your personal information.

I 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 to help you stay safe on Upwork. Additionally, feel free to check available learning paths in Academy section to help you get started on Upwork. 

[f7727a99]

Thanks for article link, I will check it.

[bobafett999]

Raja most likely you WERE SCAMMED.  You didn't read the new freelancer resources and jumped straight in with bidding and doing some useless work