Unauthorised direct debit payments

[bluegruntfuttoc]

I have had over £240 taken from my bank account by a direct debit not set up by me. 

It is in the name of PAYPAL. 

I have spoken to the bank and because a penny was put into my account a week or so before, that is effectively saying the DD is accepted by me  and therefore they cannot give me my money back.

I have spoken to paypal, they tell me that because no transactions have gone through on my pay pal account and thet the money hasn't come out of my paypal account, there is nothing that they can do.

Can I have some help here?

[sharpiemarker]

@bluegruntfuttoc 

It seems to me that if there was no record of transaction in your PayPal account activity, it it likely that PayPal guest checkout was used and the payment was made with card info because PayPal Guest checkout only allows cards, not bank accounts so your card info was compromised in some way and the payment itself was simply processed by PayPal as the merchant uses PayPal as their payment processor. Your PayPal account itself was probably not involved in this fraudulent transaction.  

To be thorough, you should also do a search of your email account by date for any PayPal email receipts that can be of relevance to this transaction so if your PayPal email address was involved. If there is a PayPal email receipt and there is a receipt ID number, call customer service and provide that to open a dispute.

Fraudsters have remote card readers where you can just walk past someone carrying one and they got your info through transmission through air or phishing emails and clicking links, computer viruses/malware. So if the charge was through the debit card, call your card issuer to report unauthorized payment and they in turn will contact PayPal in the course of their inquiries.

Friendly theft can also occur so think about who also have access to your card/bank account info and use it without telling you or forgot to tell you.