Hello again, my social networking friend!

For my first official post of 2010 I want to “name and shame” a scumbag from getafreelancer.com who ripped off a very close friend of mine. I have heard a lot recently about GAF going downhill and becoming a haven for scammers and con artists outsourcing work that was originally outsourced to them, but this one hit too close to home and I intend to do something about it.

The story began a month ago when a friend, who lives nearby, lost her job and needed money for food and bills, so I suggested writing articles for people online. She’s really good at writing, so it suited her well. She signed up on the getafreelancer site and was working literally an hour later. Everything seemed great!

She submitted the articles to the buyers and they were all pleased with her work and told her so, but then some of them didn’t pay her. No reason or explanation was given, but they just didn’t follow through on their end of the deal. I felt bad for her because she put so much time into writing for hours, only to be letdown, which would leave a sour taste in anyone’s mouth about working online again. We all know that the internet is a landmine of scams, but even I was surprised that she got burned so soon.

I asked around on forums and found out that this has been happening more often on GAF with members ripping off outsourcers and then reusing the stolen articles for their own use, or to sell to others. The worst offender in this case is a person named Mohammed Sutarwala with the username mohds2. He appears as a large provider to companies and, when they give him work to do, he then hires someone else to do it for him and doesn’t pay them, but he gets paid by the company anyway.

Now, I understand if the work is not satisfactory, but in this case Mohammed Sutarwala (mohds2) said everthing was great (we have the correspondence to prove it) AND proceeded to use those stolen articles that he did NOT pay for the right to use on other sites. We have contacted every site so far and the articles have been removed, but the point is that this is just bad business and should be stopped.

To this SCAMMER : If you really didn’t like the articles by “wandafraser” (and lied to her in the chat), then fine, but since you never paid for them, then they are NOT your property, so stop using them! Be an adult and pay for the work you had done for you! ALL incidences of your infringement WILL be reported to every site you use for this! You have been warned…

- End of Getafreelancer Stolen Articles rant. Be careful and please share this story with others or comment here if you’ve ever been cheated yourself online. I want all scammers to suffer!!

UPDATE: The same sleazeball is now also an Articleblast.com scammer (link to his “freedomto quitsmoking” profile there). ALL the writings listed as being from that author were actually written by “wanda”, and NOT by the person listed!! We have contacted that website about the infringing content and a “cease and desist” letter is being prepared…