
How over 25 People Got Scammed into Working at a Nonexistent Game Company - howard941
https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/07/how-over-25-people-got-scammed-into-working-at-a-nonexistent-game-company/
======
Iv
On my first gig as a freelancer, I had the misfortune to have such a non-
paying (almost) nonexistent company as a client. Worked almost two months
without getting paid. I almost abandoned freelancing after that.

Since then, I have a rule, that only failed me once: before working a month
for a person, work a week or less, get paid.

There are smart scammers who are really devious but those I have met had all
kind of pathological problems they were in denial with. I think that most
scammers live in a fantasy world.

By forcing them to prove they have money, are ready to pay you and know how to
make a bank transfer, you are pruning a lot of them.

Also, and especially in my case where I have several international clients,
the "I dont understand the bank transfer got refused" excuse is very common
(and sadly, very believable). Having worked through all the troubles of making
a payment from their accounts to yours already sets expectations about normal
delays.

~~~
CPLX
Don't ever work, at all, without getting paid at least something up front,
ever.

Unless you're working in a physical office, or on a platform that handles
escrow or similar, of course.

Just don't do it. You will lose literally zero good, profitable opportunities
by following this rule.

~~~
mdorazio
Wait, what? How is this supposed to work for something like consulting? Asking
for a retainer up front is often a one-way ticket to a potential client saying
"no thanks" and going with someone else. I _definitely_ would have lost many
highly profitable opportunities with that approach.

~~~
cosmodisk
Freelancing!=consulting,or at least not always. In consulting you'd normally
sign engagement contracts, probably even come up with a proposal on what
you'll do. Also depends what companies you deal with,in what industry and etc.
Freelancing,at least in generally accepted terms,is slightly different,even
though there's lots of overlapping areas.

~~~
mdorazio
I understand what you're saying, but I think the difference there is one of
contractual maturity more than anything else. There's no reason a run of the
mill freelancing setup can't utilize enforceable contracts, even for small
projects. A statement I would agree with is something like, "Never do any work
unless you have an enforceable contract in place or get a good-faith payment
up front."

------
mikestew
Your first alarm warning to walk away is the first time payroll is missed.
Unless you have some personal attachment to the founders or summat, no amount
of "vision" and "passion" is going to make up for the fact that the company is
doomed and/or you're being scammed.

If you're not on payroll, as another commentor mentions: get money up front.
If that's a problem, walk away. Take a page from my patented School of Hard
Knocks: if the relationship _starts_ with money problems, you're not suave
enough to salvage it. (Source: almost ten years running a consulting company.)

~~~
namanyayg
I think people miss this because of the Sunken Cost Fallacy.

I've been freelancing 8 years and I can't imagine taking on a project without
50% upfront. The rare instances I missed that, I've lost money -- fortunately
not more than a few thousand total.

------
corodra
I'm sorry, but that first paragraph was hilarious. Hates coding and realizes
they don't want to be part of the pool that actually has to work 60+ hours a
week... I want to be a team manager! I'd rather tell people to work 60 hours
instead of being told to work 60 hours!

~~~
Slartie
I laughed at that point, too. Would have immediately showed the door to such
an applicant. Reminded me a lot of little kids' job dreams: "I want to be a
boss when I'm big..."

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I think that is an _excellent_ career goal.

~~~
fapjacks
Sure, management is a fine career goal, as good as any. But when many people
say, "I wanna be the boss!" in the best case, it's some fantasy about control,
and in the worst it turns out to be pathological. And those are the last
people on the planet you want to be "the boss".

~~~
invalidOrTaken
I actually mean it the other way: a "fantasy about control" sounds extremely
sensible to me. Whether that manifests as

\- being lord of your shack in the woods and its surrounding area

\- being in management

\- having your house paid off

\- being in high demand

 _All_ of those sound pretty great to me.

I like being a developer. But I think I'd rather own Papa John's. (Not _a_
Papa Johns, _all of_ Papa John's).

~~~
fapjacks
I see what you're saying, and I'm on board with that. But isn't it sort of a
tautology? I mean, these seems to be a pretty universal human value, to want
some measure of positive, affirmative things to happen to us. Even to the
point that some people drive themselves (and their families) into the dirt,
killing themselves trying to achieve what they think will give them that kind
of self-actualization.

------
potatofarmer45
I hire people via upwork and freelancer to do a lot outsourced non-core tasks
for my startup. One of the traits I look for is an immovable demand that
30-50% of a project be paid upfront.

It's a s __* test that is a far better indicator of experience and competence
than any flashy portfolio and ratings.

------
gwbas1c
> Lycanic hopes that in the end, the experience with Drakore will turn out
> well for Zeal. “At the end of the day, this is not a loss for us. This is a
> win for us,” said Dinçer. “We know tons of people who want to work with us
> and not ask for money from us until the time the game starts making money.”

> Lycanic was a team of two developers, Mert Dinçer and Tim Popov

IMO, Dincer and Popov hold rather significant liability for not doing their
due diligence. They were involved in the situation on a day-to-day basis, and
will profit the most from the scam.

~~~
cloakandswagger
I did find that quote funny. No kidding it's a win for you, by not exercising
due diligence you got 25 people to work on your game for free, and you got to
walk away with their work and the rights to the game. Talk about a windfall!

~~~
fapjacks
Not only that but the PR from this story will bring a ton of sales and buzz.
They won the lottery.

------
jlg23
Milestones. As a freelancer I have insisted on payment after milestones and it
never failed me. That and very strict "no pay, no work" ethics.

The point is: Even when "there is no money", getting someone on board takes
time and effort. If that someone makes a credible threat to leave, more often
than not suddenly there is money. If not: RUN.

~~~
SantalBlush
The milestone method is very common in the trades, where a lot of builders,
etc. are self-employed.

Scams are still a threat in that field though. I was on a job where the client
devised ways to hold up suppliers so we'd miss our deadlines and he'd get a
discount. I did a 22-hour shift and my boss pulled a few all-nighters to get
done on time.

~~~
jessaustin
A friend of mine worked on a home remodel job for which the contractor
expected delays in payment. The job included a fireplace and chimney because
the homeowner loved fireplaces. After a couple of weeks the homeowner called
to say he would pay the damn bill but in return they had to fix the terrible
draw on the fireplace because the house was filling with smoke no matter how
the damper was adjusted. Check in hand, the contractor sent my friend up a
ladder to drop a rock down the chimney. After the plate glass they had
cemented into the flue while building the chimney was broken, the draw was
fine...

~~~
gamblor956
Very surprised that your friend still has your contractor's license since
that's a great way to get it terminated forever.

Also a good way to get sued for negligence.

And while we're at it, your friend was looking at potential criminal charges,
especially if the house had filled with carbon monoxide and killed its
inhabitants.

But I suppose it makes a good story.

~~~
jessaustin
Haha "contractor's license" what is that? At the state level, some
_electricians_ are licensed. Carpenters, generals? No way. The county we're
talking about doesn't even inspect private homes. (Which lack of inspection is
a _good_ thing. You can always hire an inspector. In the meantime, thrifty
folks are building their own homes and only hiring out for the jobs they can't
do themselves.) Besides this was probably thirty years ago. My friend is
_old_. His employer (is he who you want to see licensed?) probably isn't even
still alive now.

CO is dangerous, sure, but lots of fireplaces have had poor draws over the
thousands of years that humans have been using fireplaces. It's more common to
die from CO when the whole house is burning, but it isn't a sure thing even
then. Lots of practices that used to be accepted are going away now that some
buildings have CO detectors installed. I had to get the fire department
involved to convince a tenant in my office building that their cleaning crew
shouldn't use _propane_ -powered floor buffers. The fire department guy was
like "I _wondered_ why we had a CO alarm in June..."

It's amusing to me that you're so sure my friend was lying about this amusing
anecdote from his past. I've seen this guy get in an argument with an employer
when he thought he had been _over_ paid.

~~~
gamblor956
GC licensing isn't some new regulation. It's been around for a lot longer than
30 years in most states. In Colorado, carpenters and other general
contractor's are licensed at the municipal/county level, not the state level.
All counties in Colorado require general contractors to be licensed except the
most rural counties.

It's one thing to build a chimney that accidentally traps fumes. It's another
to do so deliberately. This sort of stunt in CA would be (and 30 years ago,
still would have been) a criminal act.

So yeah, I'm pretty sure your friend is either outright lying or exaggerating
the truth to ridiculous extremes.

 _It 's more common to die from CO when the whole house is burning, but it
isn't a sure thing even then._

I have no idea where you got this statistic from, but the primary cause of
death from fires is smoke inhalation, not CO inhalation. CO inhalation deaths
are greatest in the winters when people run their fireplaces with the chimney
flues closed or faulty internal heaters.

~~~
jessaustin
_...except the most rural counties._

This may come as a surprise, but I live in a rural county, and the house we're
talking about is in an even more rural county. It's curious, that on HN we
Americans are always reminded not to assume anything about other cultures (and
rightly so), but we're eager in turn to assume all sorts of things about other
states we've never seen. You've got some strong emotions about how remodeling
should be done and paid for, but not everyone feels the same as you do.
Certainly not everyone felt that way decades before you even thought about
construction. California (or whatever other state you're referencing) is not a
microcosm of the rest of the nation.

Anyway, you're wrong about that state too. Lots of remodeling gets done there,
too, without the involvement of licensed general contractors.

~~~
gamblor956
_Anyway, you 're wrong about that state too. Lots of remodeling gets done
there, too, without the involvement of licensed general contractors._

Not legally, which was my point.

------
dvh
I was shortly working with similar guy, although from the day one it was
free/hobby project. He as a leader couldn't keep focus, he was talking about
mountains 200 miles north somewhere at 5h mark in game. Then at one point
whenever he asked if I can do feature x, feature y, I said: let's work on
first 5 minutes of game play. Ok ok. When he came up with another ideas I said
let's work on first 30s of gameplay. Then whenever he get any more ideas I
asked: "is this in first 5 minutes of gameplay?". It wasn't and the whole
project went nowhere. I still have /r/inat I'm my RSS reader but mostly only
for daily "I want to make MMORPG" posts.

------
herodotus
It saddens me that there are so many crooks in the world, and that many of
them are technically proficient, and that the internet has turned into the
perfect platform for crooks, liars, scumbags and cheats.

In 1994, a colleague and I, caught up in the excitement and promise of the
Internet and HTML / browsers, gave two 1 hour University-wide lectures about
the wonderful promise of what was to come. We made predictions that we thought
bordered on crazy (like: one day you will see the things called URLs on
buses!). But what we did not foresee is the stinking morass that much of the
web has become.

~~~
codesushi42
I will get downvoted for sure. And FWIW, I don't work at a blockchain company.
But these issues seem like the type of thing smart contracts with escrow
accounts were meant to solve.

Place the payment into an escrow account that pays out to multiple parties on
a regular cadence, after milestone etc. Everyone can see there's a balance in
the account, and it's guaranteed to be dispersed according to some conditions
being met.

~~~
_mhr_
I don't know anything about smart contracts, but how does the smart contract
know if a milestone has been met?

~~~
codesushi42
It doesn't. But it can guarantee regular payments, and transparency regarding
the funds available.

You could implement a voting mechanism for the milestone payment. Or leave it
to the boss.

------
cosmodisk
There are a lot of people reading this that may,at some point, go into
freelancing.I do have a mixed experience of freelancing and seeing these
things from the business perspective. 2 simple rules: 1) Always,always ask for
% upfront. Ideally,50%. If they start coming up with excuses,drop them.There
are extremely persuasive people out there, don't get on their hook. 2) Set
milestones. Daily,weekly, or if a project is huge, maybe biweekly. If they
start their crap about particular invoicing dates,money release, accountant
being away or any other crap,even if it sounds convincing- drop them or put
the project on halt,by limiting or restricting access, or some other ways. I'm
senior enough in business to know plenty of weasel ways business people pull
on freelancers, don't get fooled.

------
EnFinlay
It's crazy to hear someone pull a scam like that and deny it's scam because
they were working hard too.

------
iamnotacrook
Is that the correct link? It starts out ok but switches to another page after
a second or two.

~~~
ivberrOg
the au site explodes if you access with js disabled, try
[https://kotaku.com/how-over-25-people-got-scammed-into-
worki...](https://kotaku.com/how-over-25-people-got-scammed-into-working-at-a-
nonexi-1836834497)

