While it's not at all surprising, it was a fun read. Having used Elance/Upwork in the past, I was pretty sure quite a lot of off-shore (Indian, Eastern European) companies do a similar scheme. At least some of them definitely pretend to be a single developer and/or let one developer with better skills (communication and programming-wise) do the interview and then throw cheaper "resources" at the actual project.
The surprising part was that Maris/PND seems to have a pretty good command of English himself, so he could have easily done this without involving other people and thus mostly avoid being caught. Though maybe he runs a larger operation and he simply needs more people to do this.
I saw "translation project", their sample documents, power plants chart, are written as confidentials internal use only. client location is palesthine territories. (There are no branch on this power plant company. )
I am not sure palesthine has internet enviroment and they can use upwork.
And on odesk, former upwork, a client ask me to work "online store management", actually they are fake identification goods seller, their server is also in panama. (banned but their sites can see on archive)
There are few credit check on these cool tech industries.
For AI tuning, margin revenue is the 1st priority.
Credit check maybe difficult, AI can't dispute for their instructions.
The surprising part was that Maris/PND seems to have a pretty good command of English himself, so he could have easily done this without involving other people and thus mostly avoid being caught. Though maybe he runs a larger operation and he simply needs more people to do this.