**Possible Job Scams

• Asks you to pay money to get a job, including things like reimbursable site registration fees and assurance deposits
• Requests you contact them directly via email, chat, or other means before they invite you to interview or hire you on a contract
• Inquires about your contact information, such as your email address, chat IDs, or phone number before the interview stage
• Offers to pay you directly via PayPal, Western Union, or another method outside of the Upwork finance system
• Tells you to start working before they hire you to an official Upwork job contract
• Tries to blackmail you for good feedback

Important: Our Scam Ops team is trained to handle and investigate these cases. This section is to help share some factors that may point out a potential scammer. If you suspect a scammer, please follow the above mapped process for Scam Ops.

A potential scammer will more than likely show a $0 spend. This is typically in conjunction with the example scenarios above as well as the info provided below.

• Name mismatch with name on email
• Email mismatch with company name
• Registration/TZ/Login mismatch

• Post jobs in categories that require more basic skills and have more applicants (Data Entry, Admin Assistant, VA, CSM, etc.) 
• Short and vague job posts/messages because they are not real and/or have errors in spelling, grammar, and syntax because they don’t care - it may appear like they are “hurried”
• Job posts copied from legit jobs or templates from the web in order to pass as legit
• “Too good to be true” type of job in terms of payment and benefits e.g. a very high hourly rate

• They ALWAYS want to drive the applicant off Upwork, so they include contact info in their job post to pull them off the site 
• Not a personalized posting
• Postings that are a bit unclear
• Their accounts may showcase non-professional emails/mismatched identities
• And most of all scammers want FLs to do the FIRST contact 

A good example case is here, notice how the word ‘Hangouts’ in Google Hangouts is spelled with a Q here, like Hanqouts - this is an attempt to get around our detection methods within Messages.

IMPORTANT - These FAQs are for internal use. These are questions asked by CS agents from a live training. These answers are not meant to be copied/pasted to our customers.

Can we share the Scam Ops email with freelancers?

The Scam Ops email is for internal use only.

If a freelancer said that they received a check from a client and they were asked to buy something, what will be the best response to FL?

It’s best to thank the FL for sharing this information with us and to let them know that all payments should stay directly on the Upwork site for their safety. They should definitely read Staying Safe on Upwork for more details on this and the **Possible Scam Jobs process should be followed internally. Please let the FL know we recommend they don’t cash that check while our team looks into this for them. If they state they have already cashed it, then let them know we’ll inform our team, as well, and we recommend reading through that article in the meantime.

After following the mapped process, since the FL states they already have a check from the CL, it’s okay to also ping #ask-scam-spam in Slack to let them know the ticket was forwarded on as this can help bring on immediate attention. If Scam Ops does end up locking out the account, please advise the FL that they discontinue communications with the client. Note: do not disclose that the CL’s account has been locked out as this is confidential information. 

Is there any scam awareness email that’s sent to new FLs that join Upwork? A lot of new FLs seem to fall for scams the most.

Yes! We started sending FLs emails officially on April 30, 2021. We have two versions:

1. When a FL submitted a proposal for the first time and has not yet been contacted by a CL
2. When a FL is contacted by a CL for the first time and has not yet submitted a proposal

How do we handle those who come to Upwork and post jobs using company names, but they aren't actually from that company. Does that fall under Scam Ops?

Using a company name, when the CL is clearly not from this company, is actually one of our secondary indicators for scam. If the CL has no spend/earn in their account, it is always advisable to escalate the case to Scam Ops for review. If you feel this is the case, you can follow the mapped process on the **Possible Scam Jobs KB. 

What falls to Scam Ops vs. Pay Risk for fraud? What’s the difference?

There are characteristics that differentiate scammers from fraudsters and different detection methods are probably used by Payment Risk. One simplified way I use to distinguish fraudsters from scammers is that Payment Risk fraudsters are involving or looking to involve the Upwork transaction system to perpetrate their fraud, namely their actions involve money, whereas one of the golden rules for scammers is that they have zero financial history; they are not looking to even fraudulently spend money on Upwork, but instead they want to take the conversation outside of Upwork ASAP so that they can scam FLs.