I've hired a bunch of developers on Upwork (and before that on elance, etc.) with mixed success, usually fairly good.

Lately, however, I'm finding that a lot of the applicants I invite are completely lying about their knowledge and expertise, submitting code samples they took from elsewhere (including tutorials that are easy to find online), etc.

This is true even of developers who have great track records on the site (which implies... fake contracts and fake reviews?).

So I'm curious as to what other sites or methods people have found successful in hiring good developers.

Thanks for any hints / sharing of experiences.