I recently had someone posting in the job offering section extort some work out of me. It’s not really that huge of a deal. It was maybe worth a day of time. I’m more amazed someone would actually go through the process they went through to get such a minuscule amount of free work out of someone by dubious means rather than just making an open thread asking help on how to program it themselves.
But I do feel compelled to post a little ‘watch out’ notice somewhere on here. Which I then noticed there is no feedback section anywhere here. Then I wondered, would that even be appropriate to do here? Should we as a forum provide feedback on each other?
How exactly were you extorted? Perhaps rather than posting here let an administrator/moderator know via PM or email. It’s their job to deal with this kind of thing.
Last year there was this ill thread after someone had a similar experience in these forums. They had paid somone for some work and didn’t get the work or a refund. They several others chimed in: ya me to, then others starting saying dumb things that would get you arrested for terroristic threatening if you said it face to face (things like I hope you fall on a knife).
A few months ago I was getting spam at my email address because I left too much of my ‘Facebook’ profile public. I’ve tightened that way up now. Essential they got my email address from Facebook somehow (don’t know how as that’s always been private) and set phishing mails from GoDaddy with a domain (probably hijacked with a password cracker knowing GoDaddy) and then googled me and then even tried to hook me with a fake offer to bid on development work via elance.com.
So I did a bit of research on this person and proceed to get them banned from eLance.com I know worked because I checked. However eLance.com didn’t tell me after they closed the phishing account that they closed it. I had to check.
I also tried to get the domain and web host of the phisher closed via GoDaddy and had to respond through several forwards and abdications of responsible world citizenship with various levels of avoidant GoDaddy departmental employees denying they had any obligation to close an account and domain after confronted with overwhelming evidence of illegal activity. I don’t know if they finally relented they did finally stop responding that they weren’t responsible. I proceeded to move my web site elsewhere.
The orginating email address of the spammers was a Yahoo Free account. LOL, 'SEO’s trying to create a believably spontaneous email from a enthusiastic texting teenage gushing about said GoDaddy phishing site. Yahoo! never answered my complaint to close that account and I pressed to remember anyone I know that has a Yahoo! email account and actually uses it. Yahoo! that’s the penalty you pay for allowing spamming to artificially your ‘portal visit numbers’ and inflate you stock price and the subsequent collapse of that stock price.
So if these are examples of responsible and ethical business behaviour they are sorely lacking in future prospects. Only eLance came close.
So write Unity and tell them and present the evidence and the account holder will probably get banned from the forums.
As far as yourself you need to not turn over any work until the payment is made. I recently paid someone $200 to create a model for me on using sculptris and they only showed me a ‘bandicam’ type recording of their modeling process for my approval. I didn’t get the actual work til we both agreed that it was finished and I paid the entire amount. It didn’t even occur to either of us to do it any other way and the worker took the risk that I could change my mind and decline to accept the work. I risked nothing so I’m not going to be so unreasonable as say I must have model mesh before I pay. You can do the same with Bandicam demonstrating your code works by playing the code in Unity because a day of time is expensive. You’ll not have that day again and that scam artist made that day unpleasant for you now.
When I first came here, there were nasty scammers who charge US$20, US$30/hour nonsense for remote work doing nothing. The other members of this team act very nasty and we are filing lawsuits in multiple countries to get their other members of this team to pay-up. They tell all lies, put false artwork on their portfolio, claim to have lots of customers but no actual customers.
We do pre-employment screening on people who we hire. Have a degree? Nope - does not even attend University. Have a college diploma? Nope - never attended and the student office of that college does not have records. Portfolio? Artwork rescaled and actually someone else’s work on this forum.
UnityTech is very lax on enforcing basic rules. One asset vendor got banned on the forums but not banned on the asset store. Another person whom I reported for piracy still posts today, even with the basic conditions in place to show the Help|About and other necessary proofs to show the person is using pirated version - such as having PlayStation/Unity3DPro, XBOX/Unity3DPro on their license.
Our company have been playing a cat and mouse game with a scammer. Recently a scammer on this forum (and totally big cheat) was issued a search warrant and he moved to another house. Two weeks later, the investigator found him. Then we got another warrant. Then he moved again, and again.
For us, the answer is no. We don’t hire on sight and we’ve used the law to get our money back. Very effective. One scammer was denied a month’s wages when the county judge was shown his work - some bad looking stick drawings when his portfolio had nice looking artwork.
@techmage, do you have a contract and is it enforceable? Did that person use his real name, or someone who uses an alias on PayPal? If that person uses an alias, you can complain to PayPal and get your money back under false identity issue with seller. You can call the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and State Attorney general who can advise you on consumer fraud. You can call the State’s Department of Labor for employment fraud.
Yes, I’ve been forced to have PayPal reverse charges once but it was unrelated to Unity or freelancing in general.
As far as the scammer being good enough to be able to move several times they need a career in marketing then rather than trying to earn peanuts freelancing in Unity.
I actually can code but I’d never dream of coming in these forums to freelance when that kind of skill will get you a good job as sys admin or programmer in so many places.
Now, I can see were a artist might need to freelance and having taught myself rudimentary Blender skills the good ones are to be admired for their talent; and also paid for it.
Actually it’s really not. We can’t act as police or the FBI, so it always comes down to what Person A says vs. what Person B says, and usually nobody can really prove anything. I believe something like this was tried for a while, but because it’s essentially lawsuit-bait, it was dropped.
And I wouldn’t expect you to act as police or FBI. I was more thinking in the context of running a forum and probably not wanting to be seen as letting dodgies have free reign.
Right, but exactly what would you expect them to do. They don’t have all the facts, just the word of a person on the forums. I’ve had people file law suits against me and accuse me of scamming when, in reality, they were just out to make a quick buck. I’m sure those people would have a hay day dragging my name through the mud here, despite the fact that I do legitimate work for a lot of people.
I’ve also seen posts where someone raises a huge fuss over someone, only to find out that there was a misunderstanding. The issues were resolved, but that person’s name was already marred by the incident.
In the end, its just way too much mess and way too much responsibility for mods to have to deal with. There are a lot of tips that people post when working with contractors. Just be careful and check people out before working with them.
I’ve been scammed a couple of times, not going into it, I don’t think we need a forum for this. It would just turn into a finger-pointing-fest and just be a bunch of people flaming each other 24/7. The mods would be probably need a raise in their salary after it’s creation.
I’d just post the experience on a personal blog. People who cross reference the person in question will likely find it.
I had a dispute with an artist and posted it on a number of forums and the artist eventually came around and acted like it was a misunderstanding when clearly they weren’t giving me what they sold me, I had emails and paypal receipts. If the person has a thread where they’re advertising it’s completely fair to post feedback/review stating what happened.
I don’t know, but that isn’t up to me anyway. In short, if someone’s going to run a commercial / trade listing section of any kind I’d sort of expect them to be willing to manage it appropriately.
I was an active moderator on a gaming forum for 5 or so years where there was a trading sub-forum. They managed it by asserting the right to close any thread at any time for any reason without cause or warning (i.e.: a thread being closed is not an accusation or anything to be considered legal, it’s just a discussion thread being closed/deleted like any other) and by sticking up buyers guides / suggested behaviour (including how not to get scammed) guides. While the forum was at its peak popularity there were also restrictions on who was allowed to post in the section at all to keep it to established community members rather than pop-ins or first timers.
At the end of the day, even on that forum there was nothing of any significant consequence that the mods could actually do if someone did get scammed, aside from make info available to the relevant authorities if it was requested of them. But the combination of all of the above still managed to achieve an aura of vigilance around the trading section, and in the 5 years I was an active moderator there was only one, single incident of dodgy behaviour. What I outlined above wouldn’t necessarily work here, but what I’m getting at is that there can be more done than throwing hands in the air and saying “it isn’t our problem, you go in there at your own risk”. Just a perception of vigilance can go a long way.
Edit: Personally, I’d break the “here are a few tips” and “[we] are not responsible for” sections of the read-before-posting into their own sticky, or at least make them stand out far more than they do, and expand on the “hints” to at least point out that trades made in anonymity give zero security and suggest not trading with anyone who won’t share such information. After all, the best protection is for people to protect themselves, so a little behaviour change amongst users here could get the dodgy individuals to move on elsewhere.
You’re more likely to make yourself look like a jerk that people shouldn’t hire than you are to make them look bad. Think about it, regardless of what happened between you and that client, who wants to hire somebody who’s going to publicly humiliate them if things go south (even if it’s their fault)?
Just be professional - save the warnings complaints for interviews and lunchtime banter.
Additionally, even though I’m not sure what happened between you and your client, I’m certain there was some way you could have protected yourself. Make sure you have a contract. Protecting yourself has nothing to do with not trusting people, it has everything to do with not trusting the odds and the fact that people who might screw you over are more likely to do so if you leave yourself open to it. Usually the bad clients will be scared off by a contract, because most of the time it’s because they didn’t actually have the funds they offered to pay you, but a contract forces them to keep their end of the deal as long as you keep yours.
(Public reply to a private question)
No. That is not what I meant. There were scammers here who were charging US$20 - US$150/hour remote work doing nothing. You heard it right. Just doing nothing. No delivery of products nor services. Then later they block you on Skype after you pay the money after a week or so.
The legit guys on this forum looking for a job were asking for fixed price work or very lowly wages (intern or US$2 - US$30/hour). They had college diplomas and working part-time as waiters, McDonald’s, Denny’s, or some other job to finance their University studies.
The scammers were flipping them by outsourcing their work to the legit guys. Some even outsource their own works to Indian and Pakistani Unity3D developers on this forum.
Later I got ex-LucasArts, Sony-On-Line entertainment ex-employees to work full-time. None of them costed as much as the frauds did.
Here’s a thought. How about a user-showcase section? Instead of bad mouthing the bad folks, create a list of users who’ve done great, reliable work. Users can nominate others, and only positive developers would be shown.
Don’t allow users to post comments or anything. Just have the developers, portfolios of their work, projects they’ve been accredited to, etc.
