Known Scammers
It's hard to pin down scammers' accounts, and freelancers might find themselves being scammed for their work after their buyer leaves without paying a single cent upon receiving the written works. Freelancer.com gives little to no regulation for buyers to post their job, and some of us might get deceived by these fraud buyers.
Based on some other freelancers' experiences and mine, scammers on Freelancer.com usually uses tactics similar to below:
- Opening new accounts with anonymous or generic names - Peter, Robert, names that you can't track down easily
- Posting a template-style job description - You might see plenty of these same projects being posted within the same hour or so
- Asking you to add them on Skype or communicate off-site
- Refusing to use the Freelancer secure payment options via pending milestones, or insist that they will only be paying by the end of the month or after the project is 100% completed
- Quick turnaround time - you might be expected to complete an assignment given within 3 - 4 hours instead of the usual 1-3 business days.
Here are some of the known Skype handles, e-mail addresses or any other IDs of scammers that we currently know about, so if you are considering doing their projects because the pay seems really good, don't!
Skype Handles:
Jokyroyk33
seo.writers2
seowriterneeded
rawcontentplatform (Robert Hart)
Freelancer IDs:
Peterlarry
Webcontent77
AmiCroft
E-mail Addresses*
world.freelances@gmail.com (Juliet Minter / Freelance World)
Associated Companies**
Dynamic Web Assets Ltd
Scripted.com (Outsourcing Department - no response from their customer service team)
Big Drop Inc (No response from their customer service team)
What to do if You Have Been Scammed
If you have been scammed by communication to users such as live:rawcontentplatform a.k.a. Robert Hart on Skype, report the user as soon as you can via the Skype interface. Refer to this link to find out how to report the user.
The more reports there are for the same Skype ID, the faster the system can take action and the IP address would be blocked from creating new Skype accounts. If you have been scammed through freelance sites and communication on Skype, report the accounts quickly to avoid other freelancers from getting scammed as well!
*These are the e-mail addresses that are associated directly with the scammer
**It is not known whether or not the scammers are truly from the companies they claim to be from, since any contact with the companies' business website requesting to know if the scammer is their employee ends up futile and unanswered.