February 19, 2025 • 32 mins
In the first episode of this new series from the Smarticle Podcast, the focus is on the prevalence and mechanisms of scams on freelance sites, particularly Upwork. Brandon interviews writer Justin Caffier, who shares his personal experience of falling victim to an Upwork scam. They discuss the tactics used by scammers, platform vulnerabilities, and the broader implications of these scams on the gig economy. Caffier's journey, described in his Mashable article, deeply explores the pitfalls and systemic issues within freelance platforms. The episode concludes with a discussion on the responsibility of companies like Upwork to protect their users and the potential risks of an Uberized labor market.
00:00 Introduction to Digital and Online Scams
01:10 Justin Caffier's Upwork Scam Experience
02:02 Reading Justin's Article on Upwork Scams
05:35 The Mechanics of Upwork and Freelance Scams
14:46 Personal Experiences with Upwork Scams
23:31 The Responsibility of Platforms in Preventing Scams
26:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
smarticlepodcast@gmail.com
https://www.instagram.com/justincaffier/
@JustinCaffier
I got scammed on Upwork so you don't have to
@Smarticleshow @BDDoble @larryolson threads.net/@smarticleshow @brand.dobes The Smarticle Podcast
https://www.smarticlepodcast.com/
#justincaffier #mashable #gigwork #gigworkscam #upworkscams #onlinescams #smarticlepodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:54):
Welcome to the Smarticle Podcast and ourseries on digital and online scams.
Today, I'm talking withwriter Justin Caffier.
Justin is an East Coast transplantnow living in LA and he has written
for Vice and Complex as well asmany other news and journal sites.
I wanted to talk with Justin todaybecause Justin was a victim of our very
first focus scam, which are known as gigwork site scams or freelance site scams.
(01:18):
There are many legitimate freelancesites out there, including Fiverr,
Twine, and Upwork being someof the most well known sites.
And these are legitimate sites that canhelp people find full and part time work.
But just like so many other onlineplatforms, they have attracted scammers.
Today, we're going to be talkingspecifically about scams on
the freelance site Upwork.
A couple of weeks ago, I almostfell victim to a scam on Upwork.
(01:40):
It was pretty shocking for me.
I could not believe that Ihad almost fallen for a scam.
And it got me wondering aboutscams in general, how they
worked and who fell for them.
In my research following my own experiencegoing down the Upwork scam hole, I
stumbled on an amazing article by Justin.
He had written it for the news websiteMashable, and the article does a
masterful job of explaining what Upworkis and how scammers use the site.
(02:02):
Before we even get started today, Iwanted to read the first few paragraphs
of his article titled, I Got ScammedBy Upwork So You Don't Have To, My 475
Lesson in Gig Economy Exploitation.
I Got Scammed By Upwork So YouDon't Have To, My 475 Lesson
in Gig Economy Exploitation.
Typically, I don't read long excerptslike this, but it really helps to set
the stage for talking with Justin andexplaining what these scams look like.
(02:23):
From Justin's article in Mashable,Last November, I was reeling from the
sudden back to back disintegrationof my two most recent employers.
My lingering self respect, along witha glance at the all time low wages
now being offered by the drivingand delivery apps that once kept me
afloat during the gaps in my freelancewriting career, stopped me from
revisiting those abusive relationships.
(02:44):
But things were getting undeniably grim.
That's when I recalled apotential life preserver
mentioned by a fellow writer pal.
Upwork, a freelance platform thatwisely rebranded from ElansoDesk
in 2015, With the subtly fatalisticslogan, this is how we work now.
Over a ketchup coffee a yearearlier, my buddy told me he'd
(03:05):
found surprise success on Upwork.
He spoke of well paid, fun soundinggigs who landed ghostwriting wedding
speeches and wine group mom chat zingers.
A glance his profile page indicatedthat having worked a mere 85 hours,
his lifetime earnings on the platformwere already listed at 10, 000 That
plus symbol was downright decadent.
(03:26):
My friend assured me that once Ihad a few initial Upwork jobs and
their subsequent reviews undermy belt to help establish my.
Quote job success score unquote the metricessential for being shown to potential
employers by the site's algorithmI too could join him in the digital
promised land Justin that is awesome.
This article was found in mashable.
(03:48):
I Drilled down a rabbit hole after Igot scammed on up working up the basic
backstory for me was I went on to upwork A friend had told me about it.
I thought, Oh, this could be cool.
I can meet other podcasters.
It's freelance work.
I was like, Oh, this could be cool.
I went on within one week, the very firstjob that ever reached out to me turned
out to be an amazingly complex scam.
(04:09):
Now I didn't lose any money.
But I did lose the timeof dealing with it.
I had to do this hour interview,which was on a document.
And it was just, I learned so many thingsfrom this, but I saw your article and
I thought, man, what an amazing story.
The whole purpose of this seriesis to wake people up to the
fact this stuff is going on.
So I'd love it if you tell us a littlebit about this, you looking for work,
(04:32):
you see this thing sounds great.
This guy's making money doing this.
He's a writer.
It's a freelance gig.
So what happens to you?
Like, a lot of writers out there,you always have to be looking
for the next meal ticket and,casting your net far and wide.
And Upwork was just one more Avenue.
(04:52):
to explore.
Right.
It was suggested to me.
I was, sniffing around the site, cameacross this one client who had provide
would a pretty consistent record.
He'd been on the platform for a while.
As the article points out, Icouldn't see his reviews at the time.
(05:13):
Why was that?
They, there was just, there just happenedto be I'm not gonna go conspiracy mode
or anything like that, but there happenedto be some site maintenance going on
where they didn't have those up atthe time of my, they were like, this
is a, how this all shakes out, had I.
I've seen those.
Some of the comments arelike, this guy is a scammer.
(05:33):
He won't pay you.
So can you explain to us what itmeans when you go onto the site?
What does it look like?
What are you looking at?
Everybody that's on there is a freelancer.
What are you looking at?
What did, what's, whatare you looking for?
I guess.
Think of it as like a sort of a marketor bizarre, but you're scrolling
through the page and each of thestalls is a merchant or a client.
(05:57):
Offering you a tantalizing Jobprospect, whether it's in, in my case
writers, there's stuff like writemy short fiction story for me, write
my son's graduation speech,like that kind of stuff.
But then there's also coding,there's a graphic design, any of the
(06:18):
white collar jobs that you can doremote are now available freelance
on these kind of platforms and.
What you're seeing is a smalldescription of the work that you'd
be doing, as well as the pay.
And on Upwork, to apply to this,which, on Craigslist, you can go on
(06:40):
to click any ad or apply or whatever.
But on Upwork, you have to spend alittle bit of the proprietary currency
on the platform to even apply to a job.
That's to keep ostensibly people fromjust applying to every single thing.
Watering down the entire purpose ofit, but it's become a lucrative money
(07:03):
making venture for Upwork itself.
So you buy these things called connects,you pay a little bit of extra money.
It's not super, it's not, 15 or whatever.
I don't even know what it is.
It's a dollar per fencealong, but it's like.
A dollar for ten maybe.
I could be getting that wrong.
And you basically, you bid ona job using these connects so
(07:25):
that you can apply for a job.
That's ostensibly what'sgoing on in this world.
So you're saying, I like, Oh,this sounds like a great job.
I'm going to spend X amount of connectsthat I have in my bank account, my Upwork
account, whatever you want to call it.
And then that allows youto apply for the job.
So you see this guy on there thatsounds interesting and what happens?
Yeah.
(07:45):
He's asking for someone towrite a sort of like narrative
description of an individual.
He's being a little cagey aboutit, but it's like a fluff piece.
He's like, I'll provideall the information.
Just turn this into a narrative.
I assumed it was going to be forsomething like a law firm and it
ended up being something like that.
(08:08):
And it's just a, someone wants to showboatthemselves a little bit, make themselves
look good to their prospective clients.
And I've done that kind of workbefore and everything was provided,
research is the hardest part ofthat sort of writing at times.
So that was the kind of workthat would be presented.
Okay.
And I talked with the guy and he wasvery communicative, he was a real person.
(08:34):
He was pretty quick to reply to things.
So when you say you talked tohim, did you talk to him through,
direct message or you didn't talkto him on the phone or anything?
Just through direct, see this is,just through direct message on
Upwork, they are very, they cautionyou against doing any sort of
interaction outside of the platform.
(08:54):
This is under the guise of It all beingfor safety reasons, which yes, that is
a protective measure, but it's also tomake sure that if you go off platform
and you start striking deals withoutus involved, we're not getting our cut.
That's a big part of it.
We're doing this all within thechat on the chat box on Upwork.
(09:17):
Okay.
So he's DMing you, you'regoing back and forth.
And then where does it go from there?
He.
Suggests that, Hey, like heasked for some sample writing.
I sent some stuff over andhe goes, it's pretty good.
Would you be interested in,what would your rate be?
If I, when did you do thismultiple times a week?
I said, I was like, Oh, wowthis could be consistent work.
(09:37):
Great.
I said I would have to do a test run tojust, get a feel for what it is actually.
And I can give you my rate afterthat, but it could be, commensurate
with what we're talking about here.
So he says okay how about this?
I'm going to put in a, I'm goingto misquote my own story right
(09:58):
now, but he essentially says, I'mgoing to put in a, like a small
deposit in the escrow account.
That is the bank for our operations.
And you work on thisand tell me the hours.
And because we don't knowhow long it's going to take.
And I said, yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
This is how writing has worked for me.
(10:18):
This is how you invoice forhours after the fact this is just
the water I've been swimming.
I even double checked though.
I say, Hey, just to make sure I want tomake clear, I'm going to do this work
and I'm going to tell you the amount ofhours and then you're going to pay me for
those hours at the already agreed uponrate, not this to be determined bulk rate.
(10:41):
He's like, yep, that's correct.
So I ran it by my lawyers, Iwas like, this is a contract.
This is real.
And I did the work.
He gave note, gave edits.
I did the edits.
And then he ghosted me disappeared.
I was like, Oh, and the smallamount he'd put in an escrow was 5.
Okay.
And that was all that was released to me.
(11:03):
Hmm.
So, this is the part that getsme that's a little bit unclear.
Not in your case, but in just with Upwork.
How does he get away with ghosting you?
There's a contract in place.
You talk about that in your article.
He said, I'm going to pay you this.
How is it that no, where, whatwas your req, I know because I
(11:25):
read the article, but tell us whathappens when that happens to you.
What do you do about it?
He's operating under the presumptionthat if I do it for this amount of
money, nobody's going to be botheredto go through with like small
claims court to fight me about it.
(11:45):
And so I can just keep doing this adinfinitum, getting whatever I need with
an endless stream of suckers until.
I'm kicked off the platform,or I run out of suckers.
Yeah, I guess this is thetough part for me, because
this is where the scam lies in.
You could simply say, hey, this isone guy that's doing this, and he's
figured out how to game the system.
(12:07):
But at some point, someonesomewhere within Upwork has
to know this is going on.
Now I'm not accusing anybody of anything.
I'm just simply saying that if,did you report this to Upwork?
You don't have to accuse them anything.
I'll accuse them for you.
They accuse themselves.
They, in their SEC filings, theyacknowledge, they're quite aware of
this problem and they acknowledgethe risks that these scammers
(12:33):
place on the business itself.
When, what happened to me, I wentthrough the process, alerting people
next, support and I wasn't even,I wasn't, I was never saying, Hey,
pay what this guy promised me.
I'm set.
I was like, Hey, you have a skit.
I was, being a little.
I was like, Hey, you have a bad guy,you should do something about it and
(12:56):
they never did something about it.
And he keeps doing it, correct?
I haven't looked lately, but as we weregetting ready to print the, his account
we kept running it by Upwork their PRteam and they flagged him in some way.
He was no longer able to communicate withme, but this was like after I. So he may
(13:16):
have disappeared, but he could have comeback as somebody else ultimately, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, but the bigger issue is thatwhile I was pointing out pretty damning
evidence of him saying yes I'm goingto give you this and not do this, you
know I may have run afoul of the properetiquette from the policy SOP for doing
(13:38):
a correct upwork task But I also wasshowing you know teacher the proof of this
guy scanning right they did not chooseto take any action against him Okay.
And we don't know if they'vetaken any action now.
And multiple people before me hadraised similar complaints to Upwork.
(13:58):
I do have that in the articleitself and their comments, I presume
they didn't just leave a comment.
I presume they also contacteda support team at Upwork.
I don't know if he's been kicked off orthey just prevented him from interacting
with me because frankly, This is theother part of my hypothesis is scammers
(14:20):
like him benefit Upwork in some ways.
They dangle such a tantalizing job outthere that it compels novice unfamiliar
users spend those, what are they called?
The Upwork?
The Connects.
Yeah.
See I've already purged somuch of this from my brain.
I only know this because it is so recentfor myself., you mentioned this in
(14:43):
the article and I, it clicked with me.
I was like, Oh, okay.
So for me, in my case, what happenedwas I saw this job that looked great.
It was like the dream,perfect audio editor.
We want you to do this.
I applied to it again.
I was a novice, just like a lotof people that are going on there.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
You apply here, give me my connects.
(15:05):
And then I get this response.
Hey, we really, we'dlike to talk to you now.
Again, this is all done over DM.There's no actual talking to anybody.
And they gave me a. They said,we want to interview you.
It's going to be in a form.
So immediately I'm like this is weird.
You don't want to talk to me.
And they started talking.
So they give me this longGoogle form that in retrospect
(15:26):
was most likely created by AI.
And the reason I say that is because.
They, it was too perfect that only anaudio editor, only somebody that had
edited podcasts or worked in that spacewould know to ask these questions.
They were just way too specific.
So I'm like, wow, I'm crushing this thing.
I know, it's like somebody sayssomething about your career
and you're like, yes, I know.
(15:47):
So I take this, it was likean hour to fill it out.
And then I went out and met a friendout in, I live in Nashville, North
Carolina, and I went out to a barand I get this immediate upwork.
Posts like, Hey, we reallywould like to offer you the job.
They're offering me this job.
And it's basically 70 an hourto a hundred dollars an hour.
They're going to start meat this and then move me up.
(16:08):
And it's, I'm like, Whoa,this is 150, 000 a year.
This is like a legitimate job.
And I'm thinking to myself thisis the weirdest legitimate job.
And immediately I had this just.
Weird feeling.
And the reason I had the weird feelingis because I had gone off of the site.
They'd given me a, an email address.
Now I'd looked up the company theywere, and it was a legitimate company.
(16:29):
Found it on LinkedIn.
Everything seemed right.
And they'd give me anemail, HR email address.
I emailed them.
And I remember in reading the Upworkthings, don't go off the site.
And I'm like, okay, maybe this isjust how you do it in this case.
I get this long email back.
We're going to buy you allthis really high end equipment.
They talked soup, like very specificequipment that only podcasters would know.
(16:50):
I was like, Oh, you're goingto offer me this thing.
We don't want you to useany of your own equipment.
And I immediately started thinkingto myself, there's something wrong.
And I. Talked to my wife, who'svery good at this kind of stuff.
And she started doing a rich researchand she goes, I think this is a scam.
She sent me a YouTube ofsomebody, a video of somebody
talking about Upwork scams.
That was the first indicationI had that, Oh, wait a second.
(17:12):
This happens all the time.
And so I reached out to Upwork.
I let them, Oh no, beforethat, I take it back.
I actually reached out to theguy that was the principal in the
company they were representing.
On LinkedIn, I see mywife's like, don't do that.
It might be the real guy.
And I'm like, I don't know, butthis seems too good to be true.
And if it seems too goodto be true, it probably is.
(17:32):
I emailed him.
He goes immediately.
He responds back.
He's like, nope, that's a scam.
They're using my company nameto, report that to Upwork.
So I went back, reported toUpwork, but here's the crazy part.
And this sort of.
Now, again, do I have any proof of this?
Absolutely not.
Don't know.
It could be the algorithm could bethe amount of staff or whatever,
but I reported this and it tookUpwork two days to take this down.
(17:55):
That people were still applyingfor this job two or three days
later, which means every timesomebody applies, Upwork gets paid.
So I don't know if that's just the part ofthe process, but that was my experience.
That, and I had this and I wantto ask, what was your feeling
Your personal feeling when yourealized you'd been scammed?
(18:15):
Like, how did you feel?
Literally?
I felt mostly pissed.
Sorry.
I don't know if I can say that.
Say that.
Yeah, you can say that.
Yeah.
Hey, we're on a podcast.
We can say whatever we want.
Pissed at the guy, but then.
Pissing myself for of course.
You are smarter than this kind of feelinglike you been around the block on the
internet enough to, I should have seenthis coming, but it also really spite is
(18:40):
such a huge motivator for me and that'swhat drove me to dig so much deeper.
Upwork and this guy than anyof his other victims would have
I mean, I know where he lives.
I know his family.
I have like, really?
Yeah, I have I and I didn't even doany Oh, so it's a real person that
(19:02):
you know, it's a real it's a real guy.
I've contacted him some other waysjust to be like, Hey, man I would
genuinely love to talk to you becauseI'm not even mad at you anymore.
It's, you are a fascinating character.
He is someone who Is created anentire, he is a perennial scammer.
Really?
(19:22):
He is one for the hall of fame becausehe has been doing it within the online
ecosystem for years going so far asto create his LinkedIn page is a bunch
of companies that he's worked for.
And they're all fake companies that hecreated and he's created a fake podcast.
(19:44):
That has an AI British voice likeinterviewing him to give himself clout
he paid for a forbes article I can'ti'm alleging that he paid but you
know allegedly but yeah, he's But he'sexploiting this very credulous like
LinkedIn brain ecosystem in the businessspace out there that are just like, Oh,
(20:07):
everyone's like doing big things and we'reall grind setting our way to the top.
And he's like, yeah, thesepeople will buy this up.
And it got him to the point wherehe was able to buy the domain or
I'm starting up by the domain.
But he.
Yeah.
Was given stewardship of the domain wine.
com by this woman who was in her shewas like a woman in her sixties or
(20:33):
seventies who had bought the domain inthe nineties and was just sitting on
this as like, this is my retirement.
And she hired this consulting firmby my scammer to fatten it up,
fatten up the cow for slaughter.
And he didn't do much with it.
And then when they were pecking aroundHey, are you doing something with this?
He just started putting blogposts to it, including interviews
(20:56):
with porn stars he liked.
He just likes doing writing, orgetting other people to do writing,
and putting it up on places.
All of his stuff is filled with blogs.
That's the recurring theme.
But how does he make his money from this?
I don't know but he I mean he got a saleof this like the contract for this wine.
(21:17):
com thing And he ended upbeing in court over it.
I found all this in like court documentsthat was like a multi million dollar sale
and it's lost somewhere This woman got ina bigger way than any of us I don't know
the restitution agreement or anything,but this guy is just Always scamming even
(21:38):
to the point where These Twitter postsare like the outside of Nobu in Malibu.
Where it's like him pretendingto have just eaten there.
Holy cow.
So have you ever thought about doxingis not the right word, but have
you ever thought about outing him?
Pretty sure I named himdirectly in the article.
Use his last name.
(21:58):
I can't remember if you did or not,but that's fascinating because it
will go in my show notes for sure.
It's part of the reason why we decidedto do this series on scams is because I
think a lot of people think of griftersand, it's like the old flim flam man who
does the three card money and you're like,Oh, that's never going to happen to me.
I'm not going to do that.
I consider myself.
I'm a very suspicious guy.
(22:20):
A lot of times, just like you said,I've been down the internet rabbit hole.
I know that a lot of thisstuff happens, but these people
are so good at what they do.
And they're so good at justgiving you enough to pull you in.
And Upwork is a perfect example.
You take people that are, and youwrite it in there, you said, things
were getting desperate, boy thequickest mark is a desperate mark.
(22:42):
And I think that had I been,I was thinking about it.
Had I been desperate for work, Imight've gone down this rabbit hole.
I don't know where theywere going to take me.
Cause I've still been like, how arethey going to make money off of this?
I'm assuming that what they wereto do is going to send me, have me
send a check or whatever, you wouldhave been reimbursed for the audio
equipment or something like that.
(23:03):
They would have said you buy it inthat exactly or send you the money or
however way they were going to do it.
Yeah.
And so I feel very fortunate.
Your article is I lost, I don'tknow, 527 so you don't have to,
which I thought was brilliant.
I love the title of the article andthat's the purpose, the point of this.
So let's talk in the last partof this, I want to talk about the
culpability of these companies.
(23:24):
Thanks.
Like Upwork YouTube, LinkedIn.
We're going to be doing a showon LinkedIn and LinkedIn scams.
Do these companies have aresponsibility to you and me?
And if they do, what shouldthey be doing about this?
Because these grifters aren't going away.
This guy's in full, you justsaid, you just named him.
So it's not like theycouldn't find this out.
Yeah.
(23:45):
I think they've created essentiallylike a digital marketplace and
it's their jurisdiction and.
Accordingly, they need to have likebeat cops patrolling it, nabbing
crooks and Especially when people,in that jurisdiction are handing
them crux and they just let them go.
(24:06):
That is an abdication of dutyto protect their user base.
Yeah.
But it's not just like they have amoral responsibility, like in their
own SEC filings that I mentioned in thearticle, they acknowledge we have a legal
obligation and they're doing what so manycompanies do these days, which is just.
(24:29):
Yeah, the law says this, butlet's see how long we can get
away with doing it this other way.
And then pay the, I'm sorry fee.
The, slap on the wrist thing that'sgoing to happen to us, inevitably.
It's pure, I don't know the politicsof your podcast, but it is just.
PlayStage Capitalism runamok, end game stuff.
This is what happensto all these companies.
(24:49):
That leads me into my next questionfor you is that one would look
at this and say, this cannotbe good long term for Upwork.
If the place gets rid of you, I don't knowif you remember what Craig's List was like
when it first started, but it was likethis heavenly panacea for all our stuff.
This is great.
I can go buy this or that.
It's great.
Now it's, at least from myexperience, it's a bit of a cesspool
(25:10):
and a lot of people don't useCraigslist anymore because of that.
So is that same thinggoing to happen to Upwork?
It already is.
What do you mean?
It's not, is it going to happen?
What I'm saying is that,is it going to hurt them?
No, I get the scam thing.
What I'm asking is, do you thinkpeople, true freelancers, Who might
go on there and actually find work.
And they're going to make money forfinding, putting people together.
(25:30):
That's the whole idea.
I don't think Upwork willbe around in 10 years.
I don't think theirstock keeps going down.
Their CEO keeps sellingthe divested stock.
They're.
Business model has shifted to exploitingan X and they're moving away from
(25:51):
tithing their VIG or whatever theyget from each of these transactions.
So they're focusing on this short term,orderly profit, rent seeking model.
Get people to pay as much as theycan until the bubble bursts and
the company goes down and peopleat the top are going to be making
quite a bit of money along the way.
(26:12):
This is not a business that.
The people at top know thisbusiness is not going to be around
much longer That's my hypothesis.
Wow, that's I would call youcynical, but I don't think you
are I think that's very realistic.
No, it is so plain as day.
They say it themselves between thelines in those filing They're like
we need to make sure that if we keepdoing keep letting this thing happen
(26:35):
We won't be able to use visa as a card.
Visa won't take our transactions anymore.
So we got to at least be above this line.
Fascinating.
Okay.
So let's talk about the moreholistic thing as we close out.
So we've got, I willnever go on a personally.
I'm just like, I, it'sjust, I get the heebies.
He was just even thinkingabout going on there.
(26:57):
I'd still have connects.
I still could apply for thejobs, but I don't trust anything.
So obviously there's two peoplethat are like, nope, that would.
I consider you a great, I'veread a couple of your articles.
You're a great writer.
I consider myself a professional.
I'm not going on there.
So they're obviously going to losepeople that would consider themselves
professional or are professionals.
What about the next stage of thisor the bigger, more holistic thing?
(27:21):
You talked about the beat cop.
What's the solution to this?
I mean, the solution on the holisticsense is that we as a society stop
accepting the fight back againstthe push to have every industry
uberized and try to fight to retain.
(27:42):
Labor rights.
Yeah.
Do you think thatcompanies are responsible?
I know somebody else said to meOh, I use Upwork all the time.
If I thought to myself wow,you're getting cheap labor.
Basically.
Is that part of what you're saying?
Yeah.
It's that it's every, all the.
They tout fortune 500 companies usingtheir site, but what they aren't saying
(28:02):
in those Superbowl ads is that they'redoing it from the Philippines and
they're like, basically doing digitalColonization in a, for the new era
where they're just like, we can, Hey, wedon't have to have our labor force here.
We're doing sweat, we're doingsweatshops online, but it's like paying
one 25 an hour in the Philippines.
Cool.
(28:23):
Yeah.
And they can get something from them.
It doesn't have to be perfect, but it'sgoing to be better than, and they're going
to, and it's more cost effective for them.
I completely agree with you.
Are they, that is a spoton observation on that.
I guess the last thing I would ask is.
The part of this that even is more complexis, and you just touched on it, is that
international nature of the internet, thatit, there is no border to this, that you
(28:48):
could be, I don't know who this personwas that set up this phony job and what
their purpose was, but they could easilybe in an Albanian basement somewhere.
They could easily be in India.
They could easily be in the Philippines.
And maybe you can't answer this, Idon't know, but I've been pondering
this a lot as I do this series.
How do we stop that?
What does, I'm talking about theUnited States, is there a way, or is
(29:10):
that genie just out of the bottle?
How do we stop the internationality of it?
I'm saying the ability of internationalcriminals, Or people to take advantage
of people digitally within the internet.
So I don't know what Iknow where my scale is.
Yeah he's in Virginia.
Oh, I get it.
I'm not, that's not even what I'm saying.
(29:30):
I'm not saying that Americans aren'tscamming, but I'm saying, let's
just say that we got all theselaws and really made it tougher for
Americans to cheat other Americans.
How do we stop people from otherplaces from cheating Americans?
I think it comes back to what we weresaying before, where it's ultimately
the platform's responsibility.
To develop robust systems of stoppingspotting, stopping and compensating,
(29:57):
stopping scammers compensatingtheir victims and preventing similar
ones from happening in the future.
And until that happens, we're justgoing to be going in circles here
because it has to come from the top.
It just can't come fromwhat are we going to do?
We are all individuals, scammersand victims alike I guess what we
do is we write articles that drawpeople's attention to it because I
(30:20):
am deeply appreciative of the factthat you took the time to write this.
I hope that your career blowsup and that you're not having
to go to these gig work sites.
We didn't even get into the wholeconcept of gig work and how I see
that as late stage capitalism.
Because I think gig work is.
That's just another way ofpeople getting cheap labor.
So that's what the freelancing is, notnecessarily gig work, but like Upwork is
(30:44):
the gig work application of freelancing.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's frightening.
Thank you, Justin.
Justin Caffier is a writerfor multiple outlets.
Anything you want to press todaywhile you're on, Justin, tell the
people that they can be looking for.
Oh man, you could, if you want tofollow me on Twitter or Instagram.
(31:05):
It's at Justin Caffier for everything.
Just keep an eye out for me.
I might have some projects to drop soon.
Awesome.
I'll put it in the show notes as well.
So people can click on those,but thanks so much for taking
the time to meet with us today.
It's all me with us.
It's usually me and anotherpartner, but meeting with me today.
I appreciate it.
So have a great day, Justin.
You too.
Thanks.
(31:25):
A fun little post log of the show Irecorded with Justin about a month ago.
I had not gone on Upwork once since thisinterview and I got an email saying, we're
about ready to close your Upwork account.
I was fine, but I thought that I wouldgo on there and check anyway, just out
of curiosity to see what was going on.
If there was anybody that was lookingfor something, not to get a job, but just
(31:46):
check and see what the deal was with it.
Sure enough, I go on there and I'vegot a request for somebody who wants
to interview me and it's a scam.
The only time I've gone on therein a month and it's a scam.
Now, again, I'm not blaming Upworkfor that, but it is ironic to me that
the two times that I actually contactsomebody or they contact me, it's
clearly a scam, remember to follow,like, and subscribe if you get a chance,
(32:10):
write us a comment on wherever you getyour podcasts, that would be great.
Next week, we'll be back with a brandnew show with a dynamic crime fighter.
I call her a crime fighterbecause that's what she's doing.
Aaron West from shamrock.
org.
Very exciting conversationaround pig butchering.
I know you probably never heard thatterm before, but trust me, you will.
So have a great week.
(32:30):
We'll talk to everybody soon.
Welcome to the Smarticle Podcast and ourseries on digital and online scams.
Today, I'm talking withwriter Justin Caffier.
Justin is an East Coast transplantnow living in LA and he has written
for Vice and Complex as well asmany other news and journal sites.
I wanted to talk with Justin todaybecause Justin was a victim of our very
first focus scam, which are known as gigwork site scams or freelance site scams.
(01:18):
There are many legitimate freelancesites out there, including Fiverr,
Twine, and Upwork being someof the most well known sites.
And these are legitimate sites that canhelp people find full and part time work.
But just like so many other onlineplatforms, they have attracted scammers.
Today, we're going to be talkingspecifically about scams on
the freelance site Upwork.
A couple of weeks ago, I almostfell victim to a scam on Upwork.
(01:40):
It was pretty shocking for me.
I could not believe that Ihad almost fallen for a scam.
And it got me wondering aboutscams in general, how they
worked and who fell for them.
In my research following my own experiencegoing down the Upwork scam hole, I
stumbled on an amazing article by Justin.
He had written it for the news websiteMashable, and the article does a
masterful job of explaining what Upworkis and how scammers use the site.
(02:02):
Before we even get started today, Iwanted to read the first few paragraphs
of his article titled, I Got ScammedBy Upwork So You Don't Have To, My 475
Lesson in Gig Economy Exploitation.
I Got Scammed By Upwork So YouDon't Have To, My 475 Lesson
in Gig Economy Exploitation.
Typically, I don't read long excerptslike this, but it really helps to set
the stage for talking with Justin andexplaining what these scams look like.
(02:23):
From Justin's article in Mashable,Last November, I was reeling from the
sudden back to back disintegrationof my two most recent employers.
My lingering self respect, along witha glance at the all time low wages
now being offered by the drivingand delivery apps that once kept me
afloat during the gaps in my freelancewriting career, stopped me from
revisiting those abusive relationships.
(02:44):
But things were getting undeniably grim.
That's when I recalled apotential life preserver
mentioned by a fellow writer pal.
Upwork, a freelance platform thatwisely rebranded from ElansoDesk
in 2015, With the subtly fatalisticslogan, this is how we work now.
Over a ketchup coffee a yearearlier, my buddy told me he'd
(03:05):
found surprise success on Upwork.
He spoke of well paid, fun soundinggigs who landed ghostwriting wedding
speeches and wine group mom chat zingers.
A glance his profile page indicatedthat having worked a mere 85 hours,
his lifetime earnings on the platformwere already listed at 10, 000 That
plus symbol was downright decadent.
(03:26):
My friend assured me that once Ihad a few initial Upwork jobs and
their subsequent reviews undermy belt to help establish my.
Quote job success score unquote the metricessential for being shown to potential
employers by the site's algorithmI too could join him in the digital
promised land Justin that is awesome.
This article was found in mashable.
(03:48):
I Drilled down a rabbit hole after Igot scammed on up working up the basic
backstory for me was I went on to upwork A friend had told me about it.
I thought, Oh, this could be cool.
I can meet other podcasters.
It's freelance work.
I was like, Oh, this could be cool.
I went on within one week, the very firstjob that ever reached out to me turned
out to be an amazingly complex scam.
(04:09):
Now I didn't lose any money.
But I did lose the timeof dealing with it.
I had to do this hour interview,which was on a document.
And it was just, I learned so many thingsfrom this, but I saw your article and
I thought, man, what an amazing story.
The whole purpose of this seriesis to wake people up to the
fact this stuff is going on.
So I'd love it if you tell us a littlebit about this, you looking for work,
(04:32):
you see this thing sounds great.
This guy's making money doing this.
He's a writer.
It's a freelance gig.
So what happens to you?
Like, a lot of writers out there,you always have to be looking
for the next meal ticket and,casting your net far and wide.
And Upwork was just one more Avenue.
(04:52):
to explore.
Right.
It was suggested to me.
I was, sniffing around the site, cameacross this one client who had provide
would a pretty consistent record.
He'd been on the platform for a while.
As the article points out, Icouldn't see his reviews at the time.
(05:13):
Why was that?
They, there was just, there just happenedto be I'm not gonna go conspiracy mode
or anything like that, but there happenedto be some site maintenance going on
where they didn't have those up atthe time of my, they were like, this
is a, how this all shakes out, had I.
I've seen those.
Some of the comments arelike, this guy is a scammer.
(05:33):
He won't pay you.
So can you explain to us what itmeans when you go onto the site?
What does it look like?
What are you looking at?
Everybody that's on there is a freelancer.
What are you looking at?
What did, what's, whatare you looking for?
I guess.
Think of it as like a sort of a marketor bizarre, but you're scrolling
through the page and each of thestalls is a merchant or a client.
(05:57):
Offering you a tantalizing Jobprospect, whether it's in, in my case
writers, there's stuff like writemy short fiction story for me, write
my son's graduation speech,like that kind of stuff.
But then there's also coding,there's a graphic design, any of the
(06:18):
white collar jobs that you can doremote are now available freelance
on these kind of platforms and.
What you're seeing is a smalldescription of the work that you'd
be doing, as well as the pay.
And on Upwork, to apply to this,which, on Craigslist, you can go on
(06:40):
to click any ad or apply or whatever.
But on Upwork, you have to spend alittle bit of the proprietary currency
on the platform to even apply to a job.
That's to keep ostensibly people fromjust applying to every single thing.
Watering down the entire purpose ofit, but it's become a lucrative money
(07:03):
making venture for Upwork itself.
So you buy these things called connects,you pay a little bit of extra money.
It's not super, it's not, 15 or whatever.
I don't even know what it is.
It's a dollar per fencealong, but it's like.
A dollar for ten maybe.
I could be getting that wrong.
And you basically, you bid ona job using these connects so
(07:25):
that you can apply for a job.
That's ostensibly what'sgoing on in this world.
So you're saying, I like, Oh,this sounds like a great job.
I'm going to spend X amount of connectsthat I have in my bank account, my Upwork
account, whatever you want to call it.
And then that allows youto apply for the job.
So you see this guy on there thatsounds interesting and what happens?
Yeah.
(07:45):
He's asking for someone towrite a sort of like narrative
description of an individual.
He's being a little cagey aboutit, but it's like a fluff piece.
He's like, I'll provideall the information.
Just turn this into a narrative.
I assumed it was going to be forsomething like a law firm and it
ended up being something like that.
(08:08):
And it's just a, someone wants to showboatthemselves a little bit, make themselves
look good to their prospective clients.
And I've done that kind of workbefore and everything was provided,
research is the hardest part ofthat sort of writing at times.
So that was the kind of workthat would be presented.
Okay.
And I talked with the guy and he wasvery communicative, he was a real person.
(08:34):
He was pretty quick to reply to things.
So when you say you talked tohim, did you talk to him through,
direct message or you didn't talkto him on the phone or anything?
Just through direct, see this is,just through direct message on
Upwork, they are very, they cautionyou against doing any sort of
interaction outside of the platform.
(08:54):
This is under the guise of It all beingfor safety reasons, which yes, that is
a protective measure, but it's also tomake sure that if you go off platform
and you start striking deals withoutus involved, we're not getting our cut.
That's a big part of it.
We're doing this all within thechat on the chat box on Upwork.
(09:17):
Okay.
So he's DMing you, you'regoing back and forth.
And then where does it go from there?
He.
Suggests that, Hey, like heasked for some sample writing.
I sent some stuff over andhe goes, it's pretty good.
Would you be interested in,what would your rate be?
If I, when did you do thismultiple times a week?
I said, I was like, Oh, wowthis could be consistent work.
(09:37):
Great.
I said I would have to do a test run tojust, get a feel for what it is actually.
And I can give you my rate afterthat, but it could be, commensurate
with what we're talking about here.
So he says okay how about this?
I'm going to put in a, I'm goingto misquote my own story right
(09:58):
now, but he essentially says, I'mgoing to put in a, like a small
deposit in the escrow account.
That is the bank for our operations.
And you work on thisand tell me the hours.
And because we don't knowhow long it's going to take.
And I said, yeah, okay.
That makes sense.
This is how writing has worked for me.
(10:18):
This is how you invoice forhours after the fact this is just
the water I've been swimming.
I even double checked though.
I say, Hey, just to make sure I want tomake clear, I'm going to do this work
and I'm going to tell you the amount ofhours and then you're going to pay me for
those hours at the already agreed uponrate, not this to be determined bulk rate.
(10:41):
He's like, yep, that's correct.
So I ran it by my lawyers, Iwas like, this is a contract.
This is real.
And I did the work.
He gave note, gave edits.
I did the edits.
And then he ghosted me disappeared.
I was like, Oh, and the smallamount he'd put in an escrow was 5.
Okay.
And that was all that was released to me.
(11:03):
Hmm.
So, this is the part that getsme that's a little bit unclear.
Not in your case, but in just with Upwork.
How does he get away with ghosting you?
There's a contract in place.
You talk about that in your article.
He said, I'm going to pay you this.
How is it that no, where, whatwas your req, I know because I
(11:25):
read the article, but tell us whathappens when that happens to you.
What do you do about it?
He's operating under the presumptionthat if I do it for this amount of
money, nobody's going to be botheredto go through with like small
claims court to fight me about it.
(11:45):
And so I can just keep doing this adinfinitum, getting whatever I need with
an endless stream of suckers until.
I'm kicked off the platform,or I run out of suckers.
Yeah, I guess this is thetough part for me, because
this is where the scam lies in.
You could simply say, hey, this isone guy that's doing this, and he's
figured out how to game the system.
(12:07):
But at some point, someonesomewhere within Upwork has
to know this is going on.
Now I'm not accusing anybody of anything.
I'm just simply saying that if,did you report this to Upwork?
You don't have to accuse them anything.
I'll accuse them for you.
They accuse themselves.
They, in their SEC filings, theyacknowledge, they're quite aware of
this problem and they acknowledgethe risks that these scammers
(12:33):
place on the business itself.
When, what happened to me, I wentthrough the process, alerting people
next, support and I wasn't even,I wasn't, I was never saying, Hey,
pay what this guy promised me.
I'm set.
I was like, Hey, you have a skit.
I was, being a little.
I was like, Hey, you have a bad guy,you should do something about it and
(12:56):
they never did something about it.
And he keeps doing it, correct?
I haven't looked lately, but as we weregetting ready to print the, his account
we kept running it by Upwork their PRteam and they flagged him in some way.
He was no longer able to communicate withme, but this was like after I. So he may
(13:16):
have disappeared, but he could have comeback as somebody else ultimately, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, but the bigger issue is thatwhile I was pointing out pretty damning
evidence of him saying yes I'm goingto give you this and not do this, you
know I may have run afoul of the properetiquette from the policy SOP for doing
(13:38):
a correct upwork task But I also wasshowing you know teacher the proof of this
guy scanning right they did not chooseto take any action against him Okay.
And we don't know if they'vetaken any action now.
And multiple people before me hadraised similar complaints to Upwork.
(13:58):
I do have that in the articleitself and their comments, I presume
they didn't just leave a comment.
I presume they also contacteda support team at Upwork.
I don't know if he's been kicked off orthey just prevented him from interacting
with me because frankly, This is theother part of my hypothesis is scammers
(14:20):
like him benefit Upwork in some ways.
They dangle such a tantalizing job outthere that it compels novice unfamiliar
users spend those, what are they called?
The Upwork?
The Connects.
Yeah.
See I've already purged somuch of this from my brain.
I only know this because it is so recentfor myself., you mentioned this in
(14:43):
the article and I, it clicked with me.
I was like, Oh, okay.
So for me, in my case, what happenedwas I saw this job that looked great.
It was like the dream,perfect audio editor.
We want you to do this.
I applied to it again.
I was a novice, just like a lotof people that are going on there.
I'm like, Oh, okay.
You apply here, give me my connects.
(15:05):
And then I get this response.
Hey, we really, we'dlike to talk to you now.
Again, this is all done over DM.There's no actual talking to anybody.
And they gave me a. They said,we want to interview you.
It's going to be in a form.
So immediately I'm like this is weird.
You don't want to talk to me.
And they started talking.
So they give me this longGoogle form that in retrospect
(15:26):
was most likely created by AI.
And the reason I say that is because.
They, it was too perfect that only anaudio editor, only somebody that had
edited podcasts or worked in that spacewould know to ask these questions.
They were just way too specific.
So I'm like, wow, I'm crushing this thing.
I know, it's like somebody sayssomething about your career
and you're like, yes, I know.
(15:47):
So I take this, it was likean hour to fill it out.
And then I went out and met a friendout in, I live in Nashville, North
Carolina, and I went out to a barand I get this immediate upwork.
Posts like, Hey, we reallywould like to offer you the job.
They're offering me this job.
And it's basically 70 an hourto a hundred dollars an hour.
They're going to start meat this and then move me up.
(16:08):
And it's, I'm like, Whoa,this is 150, 000 a year.
This is like a legitimate job.
And I'm thinking to myself thisis the weirdest legitimate job.
And immediately I had this just.
Weird feeling.
And the reason I had the weird feelingis because I had gone off of the site.
They'd given me a, an email address.
Now I'd looked up the company theywere, and it was a legitimate company.
(16:29):
Found it on LinkedIn.
Everything seemed right.
And they'd give me anemail, HR email address.
I emailed them.
And I remember in reading the Upworkthings, don't go off the site.
And I'm like, okay, maybe this isjust how you do it in this case.
I get this long email back.
We're going to buy you allthis really high end equipment.
They talked soup, like very specificequipment that only podcasters would know.
(16:50):
I was like, Oh, you're goingto offer me this thing.
We don't want you to useany of your own equipment.
And I immediately started thinkingto myself, there's something wrong.
And I. Talked to my wife, who'svery good at this kind of stuff.
And she started doing a rich researchand she goes, I think this is a scam.
She sent me a YouTube ofsomebody, a video of somebody
talking about Upwork scams.
That was the first indicationI had that, Oh, wait a second.
(17:12):
This happens all the time.
And so I reached out to Upwork.
I let them, Oh no, beforethat, I take it back.
I actually reached out to theguy that was the principal in the
company they were representing.
On LinkedIn, I see mywife's like, don't do that.
It might be the real guy.
And I'm like, I don't know, butthis seems too good to be true.
And if it seems too goodto be true, it probably is.
(17:32):
I emailed him.
He goes immediately.
He responds back.
He's like, nope, that's a scam.
They're using my company nameto, report that to Upwork.
So I went back, reported toUpwork, but here's the crazy part.
And this sort of.
Now, again, do I have any proof of this?
Absolutely not.
Don't know.
It could be the algorithm could bethe amount of staff or whatever,
but I reported this and it tookUpwork two days to take this down.
(17:55):
That people were still applyingfor this job two or three days
later, which means every timesomebody applies, Upwork gets paid.
So I don't know if that's just the part ofthe process, but that was my experience.
That, and I had this and I wantto ask, what was your feeling
Your personal feeling when yourealized you'd been scammed?
(18:15):
Like, how did you feel?
Literally?
I felt mostly pissed.
Sorry.
I don't know if I can say that.
Say that.
Yeah, you can say that.
Yeah.
Hey, we're on a podcast.
We can say whatever we want.
Pissed at the guy, but then.
Pissing myself for of course.
You are smarter than this kind of feelinglike you been around the block on the
internet enough to, I should have seenthis coming, but it also really spite is
(18:40):
such a huge motivator for me and that'swhat drove me to dig so much deeper.
Upwork and this guy than anyof his other victims would have
I mean, I know where he lives.
I know his family.
I have like, really?
Yeah, I have I and I didn't even doany Oh, so it's a real person that
(19:02):
you know, it's a real it's a real guy.
I've contacted him some other waysjust to be like, Hey, man I would
genuinely love to talk to you becauseI'm not even mad at you anymore.
It's, you are a fascinating character.
He is someone who Is created anentire, he is a perennial scammer.
Really?
(19:22):
He is one for the hall of fame becausehe has been doing it within the online
ecosystem for years going so far asto create his LinkedIn page is a bunch
of companies that he's worked for.
And they're all fake companies that hecreated and he's created a fake podcast.
(19:44):
That has an AI British voice likeinterviewing him to give himself clout
he paid for a forbes article I can'ti'm alleging that he paid but you
know allegedly but yeah, he's But he'sexploiting this very credulous like
LinkedIn brain ecosystem in the businessspace out there that are just like, Oh,
(20:07):
everyone's like doing big things and we'reall grind setting our way to the top.
And he's like, yeah, thesepeople will buy this up.
And it got him to the point wherehe was able to buy the domain or
I'm starting up by the domain.
But he.
Yeah.
Was given stewardship of the domain wine.
com by this woman who was in her shewas like a woman in her sixties or
(20:33):
seventies who had bought the domain inthe nineties and was just sitting on
this as like, this is my retirement.
And she hired this consulting firmby my scammer to fatten it up,
fatten up the cow for slaughter.
And he didn't do much with it.
And then when they were pecking aroundHey, are you doing something with this?
He just started putting blogposts to it, including interviews
(20:56):
with porn stars he liked.
He just likes doing writing, orgetting other people to do writing,
and putting it up on places.
All of his stuff is filled with blogs.
That's the recurring theme.
But how does he make his money from this?
I don't know but he I mean he got a saleof this like the contract for this wine.
(21:17):
com thing And he ended upbeing in court over it.
I found all this in like court documentsthat was like a multi million dollar sale
and it's lost somewhere This woman got ina bigger way than any of us I don't know
the restitution agreement or anything,but this guy is just Always scamming even
(21:38):
to the point where These Twitter postsare like the outside of Nobu in Malibu.
Where it's like him pretendingto have just eaten there.
Holy cow.
So have you ever thought about doxingis not the right word, but have
you ever thought about outing him?
Pretty sure I named himdirectly in the article.
Use his last name.
(21:58):
I can't remember if you did or not,but that's fascinating because it
will go in my show notes for sure.
It's part of the reason why we decidedto do this series on scams is because I
think a lot of people think of griftersand, it's like the old flim flam man who
does the three card money and you're like,Oh, that's never going to happen to me.
I'm not going to do that.
I consider myself.
I'm a very suspicious guy.
(22:20):
A lot of times, just like you said,I've been down the internet rabbit hole.
I know that a lot of thisstuff happens, but these people
are so good at what they do.
And they're so good at justgiving you enough to pull you in.
And Upwork is a perfect example.
You take people that are, and youwrite it in there, you said, things
were getting desperate, boy thequickest mark is a desperate mark.
(22:42):
And I think that had I been,I was thinking about it.
Had I been desperate for work, Imight've gone down this rabbit hole.
I don't know where theywere going to take me.
Cause I've still been like, how arethey going to make money off of this?
I'm assuming that what they wereto do is going to send me, have me
send a check or whatever, you wouldhave been reimbursed for the audio
equipment or something like that.
(23:03):
They would have said you buy it inthat exactly or send you the money or
however way they were going to do it.
Yeah.
And so I feel very fortunate.
Your article is I lost, I don'tknow, 527 so you don't have to,
which I thought was brilliant.
I love the title of the article andthat's the purpose, the point of this.
So let's talk in the last partof this, I want to talk about the
culpability of these companies.
(23:24):
Thanks.
Like Upwork YouTube, LinkedIn.
We're going to be doing a showon LinkedIn and LinkedIn scams.
Do these companies have aresponsibility to you and me?
And if they do, what shouldthey be doing about this?
Because these grifters aren't going away.
This guy's in full, you justsaid, you just named him.
So it's not like theycouldn't find this out.
Yeah.
(23:45):
I think they've created essentiallylike a digital marketplace and
it's their jurisdiction and.
Accordingly, they need to have likebeat cops patrolling it, nabbing
crooks and Especially when people,in that jurisdiction are handing
them crux and they just let them go.
(24:06):
That is an abdication of dutyto protect their user base.
Yeah.
But it's not just like they have amoral responsibility, like in their
own SEC filings that I mentioned in thearticle, they acknowledge we have a legal
obligation and they're doing what so manycompanies do these days, which is just.
(24:29):
Yeah, the law says this, butlet's see how long we can get
away with doing it this other way.
And then pay the, I'm sorry fee.
The, slap on the wrist thing that'sgoing to happen to us, inevitably.
It's pure, I don't know the politicsof your podcast, but it is just.
PlayStage Capitalism runamok, end game stuff.
This is what happensto all these companies.
(24:49):
That leads me into my next questionfor you is that one would look
at this and say, this cannotbe good long term for Upwork.
If the place gets rid of you, I don't knowif you remember what Craig's List was like
when it first started, but it was likethis heavenly panacea for all our stuff.
This is great.
I can go buy this or that.
It's great.
Now it's, at least from myexperience, it's a bit of a cesspool
(25:10):
and a lot of people don't useCraigslist anymore because of that.
So is that same thinggoing to happen to Upwork?
It already is.
What do you mean?
It's not, is it going to happen?
What I'm saying is that,is it going to hurt them?
No, I get the scam thing.
What I'm asking is, do you thinkpeople, true freelancers, Who might
go on there and actually find work.
And they're going to make money forfinding, putting people together.
(25:30):
That's the whole idea.
I don't think Upwork willbe around in 10 years.
I don't think theirstock keeps going down.
Their CEO keeps sellingthe divested stock.
They're.
Business model has shifted to exploitingan X and they're moving away from
(25:51):
tithing their VIG or whatever theyget from each of these transactions.
So they're focusing on this short term,orderly profit, rent seeking model.
Get people to pay as much as theycan until the bubble bursts and
the company goes down and peopleat the top are going to be making
quite a bit of money along the way.
(26:12):
This is not a business that.
The people at top know thisbusiness is not going to be around
much longer That's my hypothesis.
Wow, that's I would call youcynical, but I don't think you
are I think that's very realistic.
No, it is so plain as day.
They say it themselves between thelines in those filing They're like
we need to make sure that if we keepdoing keep letting this thing happen
(26:35):
We won't be able to use visa as a card.
Visa won't take our transactions anymore.
So we got to at least be above this line.
Fascinating.
Okay.
So let's talk about the moreholistic thing as we close out.
So we've got, I willnever go on a personally.
I'm just like, I, it'sjust, I get the heebies.
He was just even thinkingabout going on there.
(26:57):
I'd still have connects.
I still could apply for thejobs, but I don't trust anything.
So obviously there's two peoplethat are like, nope, that would.
I consider you a great, I'veread a couple of your articles.
You're a great writer.
I consider myself a professional.
I'm not going on there.
So they're obviously going to losepeople that would consider themselves
professional or are professionals.
What about the next stage of thisor the bigger, more holistic thing?
(27:21):
You talked about the beat cop.
What's the solution to this?
I mean, the solution on the holisticsense is that we as a society stop
accepting the fight back againstthe push to have every industry
uberized and try to fight to retain.
(27:42):
Labor rights.
Yeah.
Do you think thatcompanies are responsible?
I know somebody else said to meOh, I use Upwork all the time.
If I thought to myself wow,you're getting cheap labor.
Basically.
Is that part of what you're saying?
Yeah.
It's that it's every, all the.
They tout fortune 500 companies usingtheir site, but what they aren't saying
(28:02):
in those Superbowl ads is that they'redoing it from the Philippines and
they're like, basically doing digitalColonization in a, for the new era
where they're just like, we can, Hey, wedon't have to have our labor force here.
We're doing sweat, we're doingsweatshops online, but it's like paying
one 25 an hour in the Philippines.
Cool.
(28:23):
Yeah.
And they can get something from them.
It doesn't have to be perfect, but it'sgoing to be better than, and they're going
to, and it's more cost effective for them.
I completely agree with you.
Are they, that is a spoton observation on that.
I guess the last thing I would ask is.
The part of this that even is more complexis, and you just touched on it, is that
international nature of the internet, thatit, there is no border to this, that you
(28:48):
could be, I don't know who this personwas that set up this phony job and what
their purpose was, but they could easilybe in an Albanian basement somewhere.
They could easily be in India.
They could easily be in the Philippines.
And maybe you can't answer this, Idon't know, but I've been pondering
this a lot as I do this series.
How do we stop that?
What does, I'm talking about theUnited States, is there a way, or is
(29:10):
that genie just out of the bottle?
How do we stop the internationality of it?
I'm saying the ability of internationalcriminals, Or people to take advantage
of people digitally within the internet.
So I don't know what Iknow where my scale is.
Yeah he's in Virginia.
Oh, I get it.
I'm not, that's not even what I'm saying.
(29:30):
I'm not saying that Americans aren'tscamming, but I'm saying, let's
just say that we got all theselaws and really made it tougher for
Americans to cheat other Americans.
How do we stop people from otherplaces from cheating Americans?
I think it comes back to what we weresaying before, where it's ultimately
the platform's responsibility.
To develop robust systems of stoppingspotting, stopping and compensating,
(29:57):
stopping scammers compensatingtheir victims and preventing similar
ones from happening in the future.
And until that happens, we're justgoing to be going in circles here
because it has to come from the top.
It just can't come fromwhat are we going to do?
We are all individuals, scammersand victims alike I guess what we
do is we write articles that drawpeople's attention to it because I
(30:20):
am deeply appreciative of the factthat you took the time to write this.
I hope that your career blowsup and that you're not having
to go to these gig work sites.
We didn't even get into the wholeconcept of gig work and how I see
that as late stage capitalism.
Because I think gig work is.
That's just another way ofpeople getting cheap labor.
So that's what the freelancing is, notnecessarily gig work, but like Upwork is
(30:44):
the gig work application of freelancing.
Yeah, absolutely.
And it's frightening.
Thank you, Justin.
Justin Caffier is a writerfor multiple outlets.
Anything you want to press todaywhile you're on, Justin, tell the
people that they can be looking for.
Oh man, you could, if you want tofollow me on Twitter or Instagram.
(31:05):
It's at Justin Caffier for everything.
Just keep an eye out for me.
I might have some projects to drop soon.
Awesome.
I'll put it in the show notes as well.
So people can click on those,but thanks so much for taking
the time to meet with us today.
It's all me with us.
It's usually me and anotherpartner, but meeting with me today.
I appreciate it.
So have a great day, Justin.
You too.
Thanks.
(31:25):
A fun little post log of the show Irecorded with Justin about a month ago.
I had not gone on Upwork once since thisinterview and I got an email saying, we're
about ready to close your Upwork account.
I was fine, but I thought that I wouldgo on there and check anyway, just out
of curiosity to see what was going on.
If there was anybody that was lookingfor something, not to get a job, but just
(31:46):
check and see what the deal was with it.
Sure enough, I go on there and I'vegot a request for somebody who wants
to interview me and it's a scam.
The only time I've gone on therein a month and it's a scam.
Now, again, I'm not blaming Upworkfor that, but it is ironic to me that
the two times that I actually contactsomebody or they contact me, it's
clearly a scam, remember to follow,like, and subscribe if you get a chance,
(32:10):
write us a comment on wherever you getyour podcasts, that would be great.
Next week, we'll be back with a brandnew show with a dynamic crime fighter.
I call her a crime fighterbecause that's what she's doing.
Aaron West from shamrock.
org.
Very exciting conversationaround pig butchering.
I know you probably never heard thatterm before, but trust me, you will.
So have a great week.
(32:30):
We'll talk to everybody soon.
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