PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — Bad actors are posing as reputable employers, using websites that are advertised as trustworthy platforms to find freelance work. Even if their target doesn't get swindled by a fake employer, it is still costing them money.
WPTV's investigative team challenged one company about what they're doing to protect paying customers using its website.
A Palm Beach Gardens woman said she dodged a would-be fraudster but still feels ripped off.
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"I always tell my kids, 'Don't worry about what you're going to do when you grow up, because I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up,'" Paula Ehmer said.
Ehmer spoke with WPTV as she embarked on a new chapter in her wide-ranging career, during which she spent time as an X-ray tech, an IT consultant, a saleswoman and a science teacher.
"I'm looking to do more part-time, and things that allow me to have some more freedom," Ehmer said.
She created a profile on the popular freelancing website, Upwork, where freelancers pay to bid on gigs that are posted by prospective clients. They can't see the names of the clients — only whether or not they've been "verified" by Upwork.
Ehmer found a gig from a verified client she thought would be a good fit, bid on it and was excited to hear back. Immediately, she said the client asked her to take the conversation off of Upwork and onto Microsoft Teams — a violation of Upwork's terms of service.
"I didn't really think that that was anything unusual because I had seen it previously in another job that had been posted," Ehmer said.
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But she did find some questions on the job application that were unusual, including an area to provide her bank information. Ehmer said she wrote "available upon hire" and was then told she got the job.
That's when the client sent her an invoice to purchase a MacBook, printer and other office equipment; along with an image of a check to print and deposit into her bank account, supposedly to pay for the equipment.
That's when Ehmer realized she was likely being swindled.
In an emailed response to questions from WPTV, an Upwork spokesperson said the company has a "zero-tolerance policy" for these types of fake listings.
"Upwork performs industry-standard checks for payments and screens for risks that may trigger more advanced identity verification," the spokesperson wrote.
According to Jason Kent, a hacker-in-residence who helps companies bolster cybersecurity, what's going on at Upwork is quite standard across the tech industry. He said bad actors are increasingly looking for people to target on all sorts of paid platforms.
"It puts a little bit of cachet behind you," Kent said. "You're on this platform that everybody else is on, but you're not just anybody can be here. You've gotta get a Mastercard out."
Kent said screening users before they post bogus gigs is doable — it's just expensive and time-consuming.
"You're basically just looking at mountains of transactions and seeing where the patterns lie in here. You can pretty easily see when there's a bad actor involved," Kent said. "A lot of these organizations are saying,
'Well, I want to have numbers. I want to get as many people on the platform as I can, so that makes the numbers look good. This hit Twitter early on. This hit Facebook early on. Like everybody's had these kinds of fake account problems, and it just sort of chases where the market is."
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"Trust & safety is Upwork's top priority," the spokesperson said. "We invest a significant amount of dedicated resources across our product, engineering, and operations teams to proactively detect potential scams and prevent them from reaching our customers."
The Upwork spokesperson said the website will refund users who bid on bogus projects.
Ehmer said she reported the gig but didn't get a refund. That's because, according to her, she was told she violated the terms of service by communicating with the client outside of Upwork before signing a contract with them.
"It really decreases my trust, so I'm going to go in and probably just delete all [of] my profile on Upwork," Ehmer said.
