PayPal assisted fraud

[JonnoSE8]

I realised that I had been the victim of a scam and asked PayPal not to refund a transaction until they had received my evidence. This was noted but they paid a fraudster over £400 and then threatened me with calls and emails to pay off my negative balance. They had the opportunity to prevent a fraud and instead became part of it. Does anybody know what my next step should be after the resolution center. They could not care less about their part in transferring my money to a scam account and bullied me into paying them back for helping the criminals.

[angelleye]

I can understand that you are frustrated, but this is most likely going to come down to a learning experience.

Can you provide some more detail about what happened here? You sold something, the buyer filed a dispute, and PayPal awarded them the refund, right?

What was the product/service? What evidence were you going to try and provide? How long did you take to reply to the dispute and provide that evidence? Was this an item that you shipped and have tracking details for?

We're going to need all of this sort of detail (and anything else you can provide) to help figure out if there's anything you can do at this point.

Worse case scenario you'll learn how to avoid this in the future be it through a PayPal transaction or any other payment processor (they all have very similar policies and procedures, so don't think this is just PayPal.)

[JonnoSE8]

A friend with no paypal account asked me to accept a payment for goods she had sold and transfer the money to my bank and from there to her bank. Then a month later I got a lot of spoof emails including one that notified me. Of a dispute being resolved in the buyers favour. It turned out that my friends Facebook account had been hacked and this was a fraudulent transaction. I called PayPal and informed them what had happened and would. Be sending all the details of the conversations and bank transactions but asked them not to refund the fraudulent request. This was noted but ignored and paypal paid a fraudster and then demanded I pay them back. They had the opportunity to prevent this but did not bother

[angelleye]

I'm sorry this happened.  These people take advantage of people like you (willing to help a friend).  It's a common scam, and it causes lots of confusion and frustration.  

For future reference, you simply should not ever send money to people or accept money for people, etc.  through social asks.  Never log in to your PayPal account from links given in social channels or emails, etc.  This sort of standard practice online will help you avoid this in the future.

The problem at this point is that the funds used to submit that payment were most likely through a stolen credit card.  The refund that PayPal provided went back to this person.  Not the fraudster.  As such, you cannot simply ask PayPal to leave the cash with you and not refund it.  

Credit card companies protect their users.  When cash is stolen through a card, the card company will give that cash back to the buyer, and the liability then falls to the person who received those funds to cover it.  

So there's a big chain of fraud here, and it affects everybody.  

- Somebody stole a credit card number from somebody else.

- They then created a fake Facebook account to run this scam through.

- They found you, and send you a PayPal payment using the stolen credit card.

- You accepted those funds.  (That makes YOU responsible for those funds, and making sure the buyer was legit and happy with the transaction.)

- The actual card owner discovered the fraudulent transaction and filed a dispute with their card issuing bank.

- The card issuing bank immediately refunds the card holder their money and pulls this money back from PayPal to cover it.

- PayPal then has to come to you for it.

So again, now PayPal is the one covering the fraud until you pay it back, which is why payment holds are often introduced.  Had that happened, you'd have been complaining that they're holding your money and you can't send it to your friend...but then when you learned it was fraud you would have been thankful.

It's an extremely sticky situation, and unfortunately all you can really do at this point is learn from it.  I hope it wasn't a large transaction..??

[JonnoSE8]

Yes it was a large amount of cash for me as I live on disability benefits and I am waiting for a liver transplant but meanwhile I have to have enough to eat otherwise it will fail and cause a cascade of shutdowns. I have paid the balance but still received a threatening call as the money has not gone into my account fast enough. I no idea how I can get through the next few weeks with no money left and I had already decided to try and ignore Xmas. IF I'm discovered dead in the new year it will be due to this fraud so putting it down to a learning experience is an understatement. Are there any independent Organizations that could help me with this?

[teddys]

Hi same thing happened to me this week , £800 I thought it was a friend in my village he's 67 , it's happened to lots of people, I'm in tough with a guy who it happened to on Saturday, he has uploaded a YouTube video about it and reported it to his MP to go to parliament, PayPal did hold the funds because they said it wasn't authorised, but released them next day so I believed the guy who said it was just because I never use my PayPal to receive money , so I thought it was ok if they let it go to my bank and I transferred it to his bank. I'm not paying anything at the moment, I don't even get that much a month , the other guy said hang tight as he's trying to sort it , but even if I have to pay it back I can only afford about £5 a month

[teddys]

So what are you supposed to do when you will never have that much money to pay it back unless you win the lottery?