Complaint Review: Star Outsourcing

Star Outsourcing scammed me out of nearly 60 articles, to the tune of $1340 for one week's work. They found me on Elance, where they posted a very convincing job description with decent pay. I applied, Kelly Corton interviewed me and I was hired the same day. I worked for a week before things went downhill.

On the day I was to be paid, which was a Saturday, Kelly Corton became suddenly unavailable. I was sent an email from servicesstaroutsourcing@gmail.com the evening before, so I started poking around. This company is actually based in Nigeria and they have a long history of scamming writers. They use several different aliases and steal photos of their former writers and clients to use on their professional profiles. 

To my knowledge, the police never do anything. I reported my experience to several different agencies and haven't heard a word about them lifting a finger to investigate. That's unfortunate, because they could get several felonies for every person they have ripped off. Maybe if you sent a bribe to Nigeria the police would arrest them, but don't get your hopes up. Dozens of writers have been ripped off thousands of dollars by these people.

I knew I'd never see my money or get any sort of retribution, so I sent DCMA Takedown Notices to their clients and published all of the content on my blog so that it wouldn't pass Copyscape. That week I got 5,000 hits on my blog from their clients.

After reporting the scam to Elance, they informed me that I would never recieve my money because the payment method Star Outsourcing used to verify their account was unusable. The job on Elance was deleted, as was their user account. However, they are still using other accounts. They are even using the same job posting. Elance deletes their accounts too slowly to save other writers from the ripoff. I don't trust any job posting from England now.