Be aware of this scam and suing paypal in small claims court

[mada2020]

Paypal and me were scammed by a buyer on eBay and paypal did not cooperate. Here is what happened.

• On 21st January 2020, I sold a phone on eBay for more than 500USD to a person in Russia.
• The item was delivered on 26th Feb.
• Three days later, the buyer asked for a return claiming that the phone does not turn on.
• I asked for a video showing that it does not turn on when it is plugged in. He sent to me a photo with the phone connected and off and said that he has nothing to take a video with, which made me suspicious because he already took a photo and anything that can take a photo nowadays is capable of taking a video too.
• But anyways, the buyer from the first messages asked me to send him 30 USD and he will return the item. It looked a bit strange because most buyers ask for shipping label to print and just put on the item. The ebay customer support also kind of encouraged me to send him money and let him ship the item. Later, I understood why he was pushing for issuing the return himself.
• The buyer uploaded a tracking number.
• The items stopped moving for a long time, so eBay  on Apr 21st closed the case in my favour.
• On June 10th, the buyer opened a case on paypal,
• I found out the item arrived In Canada on June 09. The tracking information from Canada Post showed the item was delivered on June 11th, but I did not receive it.
• I contacted Canada Post and issued a service ticket. They said they could not locate the item and asked me to contact the sender.
•  I wrote to paypal that I did not receive the item and that I need the sender to communicate with the carrier but they ignored my message. I tried to call them too.
•  However, on Jun21 they refunded the buyer without any response to me.
• I contacted Canada post a lot and they always said that they even do not know the address it was sent to.
• The item was sent from Russia through Russian post. When I checked the tracking information on their website, I found that they write down the first 3 letters of the postal code of the address it was delivered to. The first 3 letters of that address were different from my address’s. I thought that this was an enough proof for paypal to doubt the case and at least ask the buyer to send them a proof to which address it was sent.
• The main issue is that I am not the one who paid for the shipping to the carrier, so they can not cooperate with me or give me any detailed information. Canada post mentioned clearly that they do not know to which address the item was sent.
• I appealed the decision and told them what Canada post said and also showed them that Russian post tracking shows clearly it was delivered to another address. what paypal says “the buyer stated they have proof of delivering the package”. Yes, some package was delivered to a different address.
• I kept contacting paypal customer service , they asked me for documents that only the sender can get. A customer service representative  told me if I get a specific document they may reopen the case. I got the document, but nothing happened.

I googled later and found that this is a common scam. A person buys an expensive item from ebay, then requests for a return. He returns an empty package himself but writes a different address in the same city of the seller’s address. So for eBay it appears delivered even thought it was delivered to another address. So eBay refunds him and he also keeps the item. So, if he bought an item worth 1000$, now he has 2000$ without paying anything. Some people wrote about similar scams that happened to them. But one of them luckily, ebay listened to him at the end.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/jan/28/ebay-buyers-return-mailing-label-scam-fraud

https://www.whitecherrie.co.uk/inspiration/ebay-scam-sent-wrong-address/royal-mail-special-delivery-...

There was another person from Russia who also bought a laptop from me and tried to do exactly the same, but paypal for some reason did not accept his claim.

I am planning to take paypal to the small claims court. Will the point that the tracking information shows it was not delivered to my address and paypal did not cooperate be enough? Does any one have any experience with the small claims court in Canada against paypal?

Also, did any one face a similar scam?