Hi everyone,
i have recently been involved in a scam that has left me down £880. Before i start i just want to say that i know im stupid and should have realised but ive never been scammed before so ive never had to really be aware of things like this.
Anyway, what happened was i was contacted by a friend on facebook asking if I could take some payments for him through paypal, then send the money to his bank account. so i recieved a total of £880 from 2 different people who i dont even know if they involved in this whole thing at all. i then sent that money to my bank and then sent it to his bank via a bank transfer. he said thank you and i never thought anything of it.
when i got to work i checked my emails and saw that there was 3 refund requests. still not realising i had been scammed i took screenshots of the emails and went to send them to my friend. i loaded up our conversation on facebook messenger and his account had been de-activated. thats when i realised i had been scammed. I thought that my friend had scammed me himself but i saw a post from his partner saying that his account had been hacked and someone was asking for money. by this point im embarrased and angry. how could i be so stupid?
i contacted my bank almost immediately reporting it as fraud but they are saying it can take up to 15 days to sort out. now, im not getting my hopes up about getting my money back because it was a pretty obvious scam. ive tried to contact paypal but so far they have been useless. they suspended my account (fair enough) and to re-activate it i needed to give some details and explain what happened with the 3 transactions i recieved. One of the steps was to also pay back the £880. obviosuly i cant do that right now.
I just want to know if anything can be done? and if the people who sent me the money will be investigated to see if they are in on this. i find it quite rediculous that they are automatically allowed refunds without any input from my side. paypal didnt even ask my side of the story before approving the refund!!!
anyway, any help will be appreciated, Thanks!
