I Wrote 8 Articles for a Client. Then They Asked Me to Pay £110 to Get Paid.

Nov 11

The short version

A company called Mercore hired me to write eight tech articles for £6,000. I delivered the first four on time. Then they asked for my full bank details by email. I refused. Then they told me my £3,000 payment had been made — and a "bank" I'd never heard of emailed me demanding a £110 "return deposit" before they'd release it. I refused that too, and I published all eight articles on my own blog instead.

I didn't lose any money. I didn't share any bank details. I didn't click their link or open their attachment. But I came close enough to the edge to want to write this down, because the whole thing was designed to feel legitimate right up until the moment it asked me to pay.

How it started

It started the way a lot of freelance work starts: an email out of the blue. On October 31, someone named G. Rosso wrote from a Yahoo address inviting me to apply for a paid SEO content writing project. A woman named Aliya was CC'd, and she became my only contact from then on. She sent the brief, the milestones, and the purchase order.

On November 3, I signed the purchase order: eight articles, £6,000 total, paid in two £3,000 milestones, by bank transfer. The contact named on the contract was Rachel Beaumont, an HR administrator. Aliya's name appears nowhere on it. I noticed that later. At the time, I just got to work.

The articles were straightforward tech explainers for small business owners — what is SaaS, how cloud computing works, that kind of thing. I wrote the first four, rewrote them in my own easy-to-understand voice, and delivered Milestone 1 on November 6.

The first ask: my bank details, by email

The next morning, Aliya replied to thank me for the delivery. Then came a checklist:

Beneficiary name. Account number. Swift code. IBAN. Bank name. Country of residence. Mobile phone number. Each one with a little green checkmark next to it, like a form waiting to be filled in.

I said no. I get paid internationally through PayPal all the time, and PayPal doesn't need my bank details. I told her so.

Two days later, on November 9, she asked again: "Please provide the required bank details as well as your PayPal email so it can be forwarded for confirmation and payment."

My reply that morning: "PayPal doesn't require bank details, so you just need the link I sent previously for payment. I don't share bank details through email. It's a security risk."

That should have been the end of it. It wasn't.

"You've been paid"

At 1:53 the next morning, an email arrived with the subject line "Payment Made For First Part." Aliya said the payment had been made and attached a receipt from her superiors for my reference. The file was called "Payment Reciept For Alina.pdf" — receipt spelled wrong, which I only noticed later.

The email said international transfers can be delayed, and if the funds didn't appear in my account within 6 hours, I should "kindly visit the live chat" at a website called Uniforte Credit Union. It also told me to get on with the remaining four articles to meet the client's deadline.

No amount was stated. No transaction reference. Just a PDF I never opened and a link I never clicked.

The bank that doesn't exist

At 6:11 that morning, the second shoe dropped. An email from "Uniforte Credit Union Support" with the subject "Action Required: Compliance Clearance for Incoming Transfer – Ref TXN761133." It said my incoming transfer of £3,000 was "Pending Clearance" and that:

"A return deposit (refund) of 110.00 GBP is required to initiate the final release of these funds. Please note that this is not an additional fee; it is a temporary hold/deposit that will be credited back to your account immediately upon successful clearance."

To pay it, I was supposed to contact them on the live chat on their homepage, where they'd give me the account details.

So: to receive the £3,000 I was owed, I had to send £110 to a bank I had never heard of, through a live chat, to an account they would give me on the spot.

I searched for Uniforte Credit Union. I couldn't find any real institution by that name anywhere.

What I said back

I replied to the "bank" first: "This looks like a phishing attempt. I will not be sending any funds. Thanks."

Then I wrote to Aliya: "I just got an email from them stating I need to send them money before they will send the payment. That is very suspicious since I get international payments through PayPal all the time with no problem. If I do not receive payment to my PayPal account in the next few hours I will post all of the articles to my own site and will not send you the last four articles."

Aliya wrote back that the funds "have been debited" and a duplicate transaction was impossible, and that the £110 was a "one time security verification" that would be "fully refunded" and would "cover all other funds sent to you." She urged me to handle it as soon as possible so future payments wouldn't have "setbacks."

My last reply to her: "I am not going to pay any fees to receive a payment. This is a scam. I have dealt with international payments before and this is not how it works. If I do not receive my payment through PayPal as agreed, I will not be completing the remaining work."

The payment never came. The second milestone is on hold, and it will stay that way.

The red flags, all in one place

If you freelance — writing, design, anything — here's what to look for:

1. You never pay to get paid. This is the whole scam in one sentence. A legitimate client pays you. They do not ask you for a deposit, a verification fee, a clearance charge, or a "return deposit" before releasing your money. The moment the money is supposed to flow from you to them, walk away.

2. Bank details by email. A real company paying by bank transfer will have a secure way to collect your details, or at minimum a proper onboarding process. A checklist of account number, IBAN, and Swift code pasted into an email — with checkmarks — is not that.

3. The "bank" doesn't exist. Before I sent anything, I searched for Uniforte Credit Union. Nothing. No website of record, no regulator listing, no history. A real bank leaves footprints. If you can't find the institution, there is no institution.

4. Pressure and a deadline. "Within 6 hours." "Handle that as soon as possible." "So future payments won't have setbacks." Every message was designed to make me act before I thought. Legitimate payments don't expire in six hours.

5. The email looked corporate, but it was actually Yahoo. Every message from Aliya arrived from an @mercore.co address — it looked like a proper corporate email. But underneath, every single one of them was really a Yahoo message. The person emailing you also isn't on the contract: the purchase order named Rachel Beaumont, and Aliya appears nowhere on it. That mismatch was hiding in plain sight the whole time.

6. The "we already sent it" trap. Once I pushed back, the story changed: the money had "been debited" and a duplicate was impossible, so my only option was to pay the fee. That's designed to make you feel like the money is already yours and the fee is the only thing standing between you and it. It isn't yours. There is no money.

7. The small stuff. "Payment Reciept" — misspelled. A receipt attached with no amount and no transaction reference on it. A first contact from a Yahoo address for a supposedly corporate project. None of these proves anything on its own. Together, they paint a picture.

What happened to the articles

Here's the part I'm actually happy about. I did the work, and the work is good — eight easy-to-understand guides for small business owners, written in my voice, fact-checked against real sources. So I published all eight on my own blog instead of handing the last four to a client who never paid for the first four:

They're mine now. That's the upside of the whole mess: the scammers got nothing from me, and I got eight solid articles for my own site.

The bottom line

I don't know whether the real Mercore has anything to do with any of this, or whether someone is just using the name. What I know is what happened to me: I was hired, I did the work, and then I was asked to pay £110 to receive the money I'd already earned.

If you're a freelancer and a client asks you to pay anything to get paid — a fee, a deposit, a verification charge, whatever they call it — that's your answer. It's a scam. Don't click the link, don't open the attachment, don't send the money, and don't send your bank details. Tell them you'll take PayPal, the way every legitimate international payment you've ever received has worked, and watch how fast the conversation changes.

Has this happened to you? I genuinely want to know — tell me in the comments. And if you know a freelancer just starting out, send them this. The only reason I didn't lose £110 is that I've been paid internationally enough times to know how it actually works. Somebody newer might not.

Okay love you bye bye!

Alina Bradford

I have been a freelance writer for more than 20 years and have worked with many large publications and companies such as Reader’s Digest, MTV, CBS, and more.

https://Alinabradford.com