[wpietri]

I don't think there's any reason to assume Upwork didn't properly verify the credit card.

And my point is not just that people get scammed via credit card, but that we don't have much reason to think that this particular person would be better off under your hypothetical case. Sure, he could have done it. He could have also read and taken seriously the requirement to use Upwork's time tracking if he wanted more anti-fraud protection. He could have detected that the client was dodgy and declined to work for him at all. There are all sort of possibilities, and we can't just pick one to draw lessons from.