Chargeback and unauthorised transaction on friend and family payments

aldebaran81
New Community Member

Dear All,

 

 

I'm in a very bad situation and couldn't find any information online to any case similar to mine.

 

I have a friend who doesn't have paypal and her boyfriend from the USA sent her multiple friend and family payments using my paypal (I mean, I received these payments in my paypal and then sent them to my friend's bank account). I know I should have just told her to use western union or direct bank transfer and don't get myself involved in their personal affairs, however when she asked me for this favour I was not in a good mental state and didn't think it through and didn't consider the risks to myself, I just wanted to help (I was going through a very hard time with my dad battling the end stages of terminal brain cancer, losing him and I was also going through a divorce at the same time).

 

My friend and her boyfriend broke up and he wanted to get the money back that he had sent to my paypal for her. He opened a few cases directly with his bank, not through paypal resolution centre. 2 cases are unauthorised transactions, the rest (4 or 5) are "item not received". I told paypal that these were FF payments and provided evidence of their relationship (screenshots of their messages discussing the payments), however the boyfriend's bank decided the cases in his favour, which makes my balance negative by nearly GBP 9000.

 

I am unable to pay this amount of money into my paypal and try to recover it from my friend. I am a single mum, currently on very low income due to covid19 and I know I could never get it back from my friend either.

 

I know it was stupid of me to allow my friend to receive her payments through my paypal, but as I said I wasn't thinking clearly. 

 

I know that paypal will try to get the money from me, then they will give it to a debt collector. However I am concerned about two issues:

 

- can this affect my credit score in the UK negatively? (I do not have a credit card with paypal, just a normal personal account)

- can or are they likely to take me to court?

 

Also, is there anything I should do now or do I just simply wait until paypal gives it to a debt collector? I already told them everything, I don't even know how they can accept chargebacks for FF payments. I am unable to pay them, I have no property or a car, I am employed abroad (not in the UK).

 

I have a poor but improving credit rating, I had a CCJ for a credit card debt in the past and I had a debt relief order. I have been working very hard in the past years to turn it around, the CCJ just disappeared from my credit file and in October this year the DRO will finally disappear too. Due to my dad's illness and death I moved temporarily to my home country to help my mum, but in 1-2 years I was planning to go back to the UK to continue my life with my little girl there. But I'm really worried that my hard work increasing my credit score will be ruined by this problem. I'm 39 now, if I get another CCJ I can just forget about ever getting a mortgage.

 

Thanks for any advice.

 

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