NYCPHP Meetup

[Joel De Gan]

Hi all, I know there has been a lot of talk about freelancing here and I
thought I would share some recent events.
I run a semi-busy freelancing job board and just had some issues with a
user and some fraud.
Figured I would pass on this info so that some of you considering
freelancing, or who are new at it might not be aware of a group of
people who scam new freelancers. This one was set up beforehand and
then executed quickly. The product passed hands just several minutes
before I had reversed all funds and started cancelling accounts.

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Basically this is how it starts:
Scammer contacts user, requests rush job, agrees to first
quote (it doesn't matter because they are not paying) decides
to use an escrow on a freelance site and always uses a credit 
card. Because of the escrow it seems legit.
In the instance below I was responding to the programmer who 
was scammed by a Mike ONeil (powerx at albarid.net) albarid is 
a free email service and I imagine the name is bogus.
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From: Joel D.
To: ****
Subject: RE: Fraudulent activity via Listbid.

Well,
This is pretty common on these sites, I hate to say.
95% of the people are very good and have no bad intentions, but there
is a group of people who attempt to scam others, this is why we build
up ratings systems.
One thing you need to do is allow time for a card to go through so you
know.
This particular card 'did' go through, then was cancelled by the fraud
department at the credit card clearing.
Basically, I am told by the credit company the credit is cleared, I
put the money in escrow which makes it available. If it is charged
back or is determined to be fraud then they get back to me within a
few minutes and they pass on the information to the authorities (which
here in the US carries a pretty high jail term). At that point I have
to go back and refund money and hope that the scammer has not already
got his stuff.
If the money is not there, then I can't in turn give it to you from our
escrow.
Basically, beware of anyone who has a "rush" job that has a
turn-around of less than a day, they will generally be scammers,
nobody is in that kind of hurry. Also, the reason these boards want
you to use the services is because so we can track the users. Pay
special attention to buyers who have very new accounts.
Also when dealing with graphics always heavily watermark your images
if you place them up for view and never give PSD's. Some of these guys
(which we get rid of as soon as possible) will have you "redo" things
over and over and as they look at each version are just copying them
down each time and end up getting twenty things for the cost of one.
Time is against the scammer, so go for jobs that are longer, make them
put money in escrow first.
Within 30 seconds of us being notified that users account was locked
and the funds were reversed.
In this instance, we ban both accounts because the scammers usually
will just wander over to a different job board and pull the same
thing, but we don't want them creating a new account and trying to hit
the same user again.
I am not sure how experienced you are in freelancing, but basically
you just got worked over by someone who knew the timeframe he needed
to do this in, and used 2Checkout instead of paypal which is more
prone to fraud.
I have actually requested a change in the freelancers software to have
a mandatory waiting period (two hours or so) after a credit card
deposit.

Anyway, I am sorry for your loss and understand your frustration.
Just think that it was only one hour and I have heard of far worse
stories of users being scammed out of a lot of money.
Welcome to the world of international freelancing.
Be (much) more careful next time.

-joeldg, listbid.com, historyagent.com

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Which I had previously responded with:
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From: Joel D.
To: ****
Subject: RE: Fraudulent activity via Listbid.

The project was created today 9/6/2004 3:42 (EST)
You bid at 9/6/2004at 3:56 
We received initial payment conf at 9/6/2004at 3:56 (EST)
The escrow was placed today and I recieved the fraudulent mail at 6 Sep
2004 15:55:31 -0000 (different system mail, time is slightly off)
Which is not long (15 mins) after the project was created.
I refunded all money to all invloved from the start:

In addition there has been no evidence of work via the PMB
http://listbid.com/forum.cgi?cat=projects&viewsub=1094460167
via
http://listbid.com/project.cgi?id=1094460167

Given this further knowledge, we will also be suspending your account.

Sorry it didn't work out for you.

-Listbid staff.

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-- 
joeldg - developer, Intercosmos media group.
http://lucifer.intercosmos.net