How paid editors squeeze you dry
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The Signpost has identified an extensive scam perpetrated by a company that calls itself "Elite Wiki Writers" or "Wiki Moderator", among many other names. Some of the other names they are suspected of using include wikicuratorz.com, wikiscribes.com, wikimastery.com, and wikimediafoundetion.com.
Annie Rauwerda described the general situation in a series of tweets a year ago. Her recommendation:
You should know that 99% of all "Wikipedia editing companies" are scams that charge you $1000 for articles then never write them. Do not give them your money
— Annie Rauwerda
That "99%" may be an unscientific estimate, but it's not far from our own estimate of over 95%. Wikipedia has made great strides in fighting this type of paid editor. But we've barely made a start with another part of the problem.
Shaun Spalding, legal counsel at the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) told The Signpost
The volunteer community is extremely diligent about finding and deleting any promotional material that marketing companies try to post on Wikipedia. Thanks to the community, paid editing firms rarely succeed in influencing the actual content on Wikipedia. There are paid editing firms that we are aware of with a 0% success rate. Unfortunately, victims of these scams don't know this, and many paid editing firms act in a predatory manner taking advantage of this. If anyone receives an email or social media message from someone offering to make a Wikipedia page for you, then it is almost certainly a scam.
My advice is to be extremely skeptical of anyone claiming that they can guarantee to make a Wikipedia article for or about you, even if they claim to be an administrator. It is likely that they are not telling the truth. The portfolios that they might send you as "proof" of their experience are almost certainly fabricated. As are the physical addresses that they list on their websites; they don't list their real addresses because they don't want to get caught by the Foundation. There are no paid editing firms that have a relationship with the Wikimedia Foundation.
To maintain the privacy of the victims of the scam, we have not linked to any website that might embarrass them, and have not revealed their names without their permission.
Both "Elite Wiki Writers" and "Wiki Moderator" list the same address, 99 Wall Street in New York City — which appears to be a maildrop rather than a real office — and a second address in Skokie, Illinois. The company appears to have preyed upon more than 100 customers in 2023, according to a customer list obtained by The Signpost.
These customers include many small businesses (such as a single-store painting supply company), writers and artists, churches and religious publishers, a couple of lawyers, some little-known financial firms, nonprofits, a private detective agency, young entrepreneurs, former government officials and retired military officers — the whole range of people who would like some publicity and aspire to a Wikipedia article.
These people are certainly victims. Less than 5% of them succeed in getting an article on Wikipedia. Prices start at about $750, and quickly escalate to $1,500 or $10,000 — or more — as the "Elite Wiki Writers" claim that extra work is needed, or requirements have been raised by Wikipedia. We estimate that the proceeds of this scam in 2023 were at least $500,000, and perhaps well over $1,000,000.
The low number of them posted as actual articles (as opposed to drafts or user pages) could be from a lack of trying. There's little evidence that many of their proposed articles are written up as drafts at all, and if they are, they're commonly left without improvement until they are deleted automatically.
In 2021, three editors who claimed to work for Elite Wiki Writers (or related firms) did post a total of 71 articles as drafts or articles, in a clumsy attempt to become rule-abiding "declared" paid editors. They were globally locked by stewards following a sockpuppet investigation, where 41 editors were blocked and confirmed as sockpuppets of CharmenderDeol. The reason the three declared paid editors were globally locked is likely that they were sockpuppets secretly controlled by undeclared paid editors.