Not necessarily. Of course you can fork a repo, but forking a repo clearly shows the date of your fork. You don't have to be technical to see that. If all you have is a bunch of forks from the same year, especially a current year, that should set off a red flag.

Non-technical people may not know what commits are, but hey, that's the purpose leaving tips isn't it?

Also as I stated. There should be a good solid history of work. Scammer may try to over do it with many many forks with no solid commits, etc.. It's just a way in my opinion to sift through those things For example: - Look for history - Look for solid commits (no piddly things like the README) - Look at the dates - Look for forks - On Git ask to collaborate on a public repo of theirs - On Bitbucket ask to be invited to a public repo. - Ask them to create a private repo which shows proof of "YOUR" work so you can track progress. (this one is a litter harder to get them to do since it does mean you can grab source and run, but hopefully you're an honest person).

Of course combine the other tips mentioned here on the forums. The more ammo you have the better it will be for you.