paid money into wrong account by mistake

[paranoid1]

Hi any help very much appreciated.

I sent £100 to friend as a gift and I got a digit wrong in their address. The money went somewhere else.

I contacted pay pal and they advised me to contact recipient and ask for it back.

Every time I try to email the recipient I get a message from mail daemon saying the the address is not recognised.

I got back to pay pal and they have told me that the account is valid and that the money has definitely gone in there.

I have sent a money request via pay pal on numerous occasions and pay pal have sent a message to  the recipient but to no avail. All pay pal say is that because it was a gift there is nothing they can do.

Surely this is theft, just as picking up money in the street and not handing it in.

I thought it may be a dormant account but pay pal say no. Why can't I send a message that gets through if the account is genuine and active.

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

[SkyForce6]

It is possible to send payments to e-mail addresses that are not connected to any PayPal account. When that happens PayPal will send out a mail to the recipient letting him/her know that he/she have money to collect and that he/she will get access to them if he/she signs up with a PayPal account. Such mails can easily be seen as suspected Phishing mails and therefor be marked as spam and end up in the junk folder or just bounce back.

So set up a new e-mail address somewhere and try to contact him/her from that address and explain the situation. Hopefully your mail will then reach the recipient.

Did you fund the gift  payment with a credit card/debit card? Then you can always try to do a charge back that way.

[paranoid1]

Hi many thanks for taking the time to reply to my post.

The money was transfered to paypal directly from my bank account as there were zero funds in my paypal acc at the time.