I have had similar fraudsters pull this *&%$ on me too. Their method was 1) phishing via an email (the email was sent through yahoo mail because they had been remiss in their security levels for years) and sending me a (fake) bill from my real domain provider. NOTE: ALL of the Domains in the world (and the ones you legitimately purchased) are PUBLICLY SHOWN all over the web!! Nice, huh? 2)An instant transaction stolen off a criminal, fake, reader installed on a gas pump. Thankfully, the bank I had this fraudulent withdrawell come out of quickly helped me and reversed the charge.
Here's what you can do: Stay on the fraudulent situation like a hungry Duck on a fat Junebug. Make the company, PayPal in your case, DO something about it. Stay persistant. Do as much internet research, and follow-through as you can to find the SOURCE of the original transaction. [I will be willing to bet it's from China] I traced my "domain" bill to a an apparently legitimate business in a skyscraper in a very large island city in China. My opinion: In these communist countries, where integrity, religion, and good morals is of no 'use' to the growth of the economy, I believe that these fraudsters operate openly and regularly with very sophisticated technology to do their dirty, rotten, deeds. They work on averages,; Committing probably millions of fraudulent bills, charges, bank withdrawalls, and PayPal deductions in small monetary amounts. [Notice that both of you who posted with the issue had only small/medium amounts of money stolen?] These slimy techno-criminals know that some of the people they just ripped off are too busy, or too well-off financially, to go into fight-back mode against their web-crimes, because it is so time-consuming, and frustrating.
Furthermore, the big financial institutions that the money was stolen from are so big and financially well off, and understaffed by quality web-crime and fraud inspectors, they too do not have the motivation to pursue that $20 dollar fraudulent deduction. Sad, HUH? So out of the millions of fraudulent, small time rip offs the slimy techno-criminals commit - they probably get away with probably 1/3 to 1/2 of those transactions. So do the math (I'm no good at math) Take $20 or $50 dollars (my domain thief ripped me off for a whopping $70 dollars) then multipy that by 4 - or 500,000 thousand hits!
You get the big picture.
But all is not lost. Your personal perserverance and research will show your financial company that you are SERIOUS about this, and they will eventually get your money back into your account where it belongs. Sadly, I have found PayPal's customer service to be lacking in any real help when I needed it the worst. But you can get them to do their job. What needs to happen all over the world is for the major financial institutions, PayPal being one of those giants, to do deep investigations, catch, and PUNISH, these rotten pockets of cyber criminals. Send several groups of them to jail! For a long time. Financial criminals working through the world-wide-web are no different than drug dealers and armed robbers. They are a giant vacume of negative energy causing excessive work, trauma, and financial loss - especially in the civlized contries. They are a dangerous plague on the e-commerce world, and it is high time that big, successful, PayPal got serious about stopping them. It would certainly be a media double-win if they did catch and prosecute some organized cyber-criminals.
All the banks, credit card providers, PayPal, etc
