[corin_]

Surely that guy isn't selling ratings, as he's the client so he's the guy paying the low fees - presumably to get work (just cheap work), otherwise why would he spend $829 just to give contractors ratings. (Unless there's more going on than meets the eye, for example behind the scenes he's selling the chance to get a positive rating for more than he pays on the site.)

[loceng]

Or the company via a different means is paying this "person" more money than he is spending, to make it look legitimate -- the only loss then is the fee (%) that Elance / oDesk takes, which further incentivizes Elance / oDesk to allow this behaviour, though that is minor in comparison to having a lot of "high quality" / highly rated contractors on their platform.