Is there a scam on Upwork?

Question

Upwork

I decided to try to work on Upwork.com, registered, and sent an offer to test the service for a simple copy-paste job in an Excel spreadsheet. Despite the fact that there were already more than 50 offers for this job, they immediately answered me and offered to write to me by e-mail. They also immediately answered the letter (the robot answered, as I understood later), requested additional information. After providing the information, they gave me a list of unskilled jobs like "Copy and Paste - $20 per hour" and assured me that after I paid $12 dollars for a certain "Cjinc Workstation" I could choose any job without any competition.
Googling this company, I found some old reviews about it from 2011, they wrote that their site was made on Blogger and was completely hung with ads. They say they attract traffic with job offers, but in reality they just make money on advertising. Now they have a pretty decent site, and there is no advertising. But the fact that this is a divorce is already clear.
What is the probability of running into such a customer on Upwork and why Upwork does not take action against such customers, this cannot be a normal job offer.

Answer 1

small because we have a brain
upwork fights and bans such companies usually immediately after the first complaint.

Answer 2

What is the probability of running into such a customer on Upwork

You have to be ... ahem .. unique ... to run into such crap the first time.
In all my years of work, I've never run into something like this. I just heard from obscure people that every second employer is like that ... Where do you get them? Confess!
Are you purposefully looking for jobs in the style of "20$/h nothing to do, just unsubscribe and get your money."?
Otherwise, I just can't imagine where and how you find it...
PS
Where is it handed out? Give me two... Poor Indians don't know that there is a lot of UNQUALIFIED $20/h work, they've been hunchbacked for $8/h for years...

Answer 3

at the very beginning, when I had an empty acc and I literally wrote to everyone, I was faced with a task from the series "go to the site and click on all the banners and so on 3 times during the day, while taking screenshots." they answer with a copy-paste (I was immediately embarrassed), the very first message is a wall of text with the answer to most questions.
an important point - the customer suddenly announced that he was sending out a test task to everyone right now, and the performer would choose the type later. well, I had an empty account and I gave 10-15% that suddenly it was not a fake, so I did part of the test task from under the virtual machine and how much it was not a pity. the customer generally disappeared from the site as a result :) and this was his first and last order
since then I set up a job feed and upgraded my account, I almost never saw such garbage again. but what I noticed is that such applications are often focused on beginners who are looking for any opportunity to get an order