Received unauthorized payment

[mybluwings]

I tried some searches but didn't find any matches.

On March 5th, I received a notice from ebay that someone had purchased something from me.  I have an ebay account but I have not sold anything for YEARS.  Actually, I got 2 messages of 2 unknown-to-me sales & 1 telling me of a shipping label that had been created.

Next thing I know I was told that my Paypal account had been restricted. I was able to get to the transactions and the buyer from the above messages had deposited money in my account!  Of course, I reported both the 'spoof' emails to ebay and the fraudulent deposits to paypal.

Yesterday I got a message that the restrictions had been lifted but the money is still there!  I sent a message to paypal.  Do I have to call them to get this fixed?  

Thanks.

[PayPal_Olivia]

Hi mybluwings, and welcome to the Community!

When there is suspected or reported unauthorized access, a limitation is placed on the account to ensure that the account owner is the only person who can regain access to the account. After your identity is confirmed and password is changed, the access to your account is restored.

It sounds like the individual payments themselves do still need to be investigated. Did you initially contact PayPal by email or by phone? If you emailed, there may potentially have been confusion regarding your initial report. To get that cleared up, the best bet would be to give PayPal a call so you can confirm understanding of the situation with a representative over the phone.

I hope this helps!

Olivia

[mybluwings]

Since then, I had the account released but things have gotten worse!  Here's the chronology:

April 1st notice from Paypal that the 'buyer' (remember I did NOT sell anything, I did not have anything listed with ebyay) had filed a chargeback claim and that to dispute it, I had to contact them within 24 hours.  The 'buyer' claimed that this purchase was made without authorization to use the credit card.  

April 2nd less then 24 hours later, I called and explained the situation AGAIN to a Paypal respresentative. I was told that even though they 'understood' the situation,   they were going to do the chargeback and had no knowledge of this as being a scam...

...there is documentation on the paypal site that says they recognize this as being a scam.

On May 2nd,  I was notified that the Post Office refunded the money that was erronously charged to me for a shipping label for an item I didn't have for sale.  I'm guessing that they did that because that label was never used.  If I have to (actually I'm going to tell paypal to research that, I shouldn't have to).

Since then, my husband almost died from a small bowel obstruction and has been on disability for 12 weeks.  I haven't had the time to check on the progress of this partly because of that and partly because I TRUSTED PAYPAL.

April 29, I got a notice that they were doing the chargeback and charging ME FEES because "We did not receive a reply to our request for information within the required time period.  We did not receive proof of shipment information."

I don't care if Paypal handed this scammer almost $300 but now they want to charge me almost $50, $20 for each of 2 chargebacks and $9.24 for each of 2 charges for the TEMPORARY HOLD that was placed on my account!

This is just too much for me to comprehend.  They could have very easily verified that I had NO EBAY ITEMS FOR SALE and the PO DIDN'T PROCESS A LABEL.

As if I haven't had enough, I'm trying to get ready to go out of town because my elderly parents are ill.

What do I do???  How could this happen? I'm guessing there was no investigation by Paypal, must be a common write off.

I hope they can prove me wrong.

[mybluwings]

By the way, here's the page that describes exactly what this scammer did:

https://cms.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=security/chargeback_guide#

Since I am NOT a Seller, am I still protected?  I did all that was asked of me and supposedly the credit card company makes the final decision.

In this case, that is NOT appropriate!!!