http://www.crime-research.org/news/01.30.2005/933

Date: January 30, 2005
Source: W3Reports
By: Press Release

This is the latest form of internet frauds. Many offshore projects
are being executed via freelance websites where buyers and coders get
together for conducing offshore software development or outsoucing
any other kind of work. Lately, there have been many complaints
especially by the coders from South Asia of being mis-treated, money
not being paid even they delivered the projects online. Majority of
them sign up by seeing BBB.org or SquareTrade.com logos displayed on
these websites only to find out later that these two trust
organizations are merely for "display" purpose, and none of them can
help in any way to the victims of such internet fraud.

A typical internet fraud takes place like this. A coder from a poor
country signs up with a USA based free offshore projects website like
rentacoder.com with a hope to earn a decent living by delivering
projects. The buyers get benefit of offshore outsourcing by paying
one tenth of the same project that they would have paid to their
local provider instead. Another breed of buyers has started to take
advantage of the faulty and in-house arbitration process by
rentacoder.com which is made available to anyone who got complaint.
There were many coder complaints of the preferential treatment of
buyers on this particular website as compared to giving justice to
coders. Since the website rentacoder.com charges almost 40% or even
more in shape of fees, processing, payment and what not. But still
there are many complaints of website coders that they were NOT paid
due to unfair arbitration process being mishandled and misuesed by
the so-called arbitrators or buyers.

This has led to many criminal cases being registered against this
website and we have heard many stories from coders especially from
the area of Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka of them being exploited by
the buyers via unfair arbitration processes being taken place at
those sites. A caution is advised for anyone trying to singup or use
freelance websites. Whenever you are caught in such an internet
fraud, you are advised to contact law authorities via phone or in
person if you are located within USA. If outside, you can send them
an email or fax at the various contact information made available by
the USA Government.

Wishing you a safe and secure freelance career without hassles of
internet fraud via such sites.