fake invoice

srubin
New Community Member

I received in my email a fake invoice from what appeared to be Go Daddy. It looked authentic and was for a website that I purchased through Go Daddy.

I paid the $53.00 by American Express thru Paypal. When I saw a Russian email address for the payment I asked Go Daddy about it and they said it was fake--and a very good one. I asked Paypal to refund the transaction and they said they could not. How does Paypal allow such users? This is clearly misuse of Paypal.

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37 REPLIES 37

evoredy
Contributor
Contributor
This is a very crafty Phish and seems to be a very effective exploit on PayPal services and customers. Also i just received it 10 minutes ago. I didn't pay it / no other info matches other than email and domain.
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winneymj
Contributor
Contributor

My wife received one from GoDaddy last week and unfortunately she paid it.  Someone is making some money on this, not just PayPal.

We opened a dispute about the scam with PayPal and guess what....response was "Based on our review, we found this transaction is consistent with your PayPal payment history."

How can a company allow fake invoices to be created and not allow any recourse when people are scammed on their platform.  Would be nice to see a "This is a scam invoice" button next to transactions so they can be easily reported when you spot them.

I guess PayPal does not care as they get paid transaction fees no matter what happens.

I logged a Consumer Report with the FTC about PayPal and its lack of responsibility around scams.  They laughingly even list 24x7 Transaction Security  and Fraud Prevention as something they do...NOT.

The charge went direct to Credit Card, so I might try them next to see if they can do anything as the transaction was result of scam.  Doubt they will as they likely will say PayPal is the problem.

 

 

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Justyse
Contributor
Contributor

Just got TWO of these!! I sent an email to spoof@paypal.com and got zero response aside from the initial auto-response. Luckily I did not pay them because I knew my renewal dates were a year away! 😖

PaypalFakes.jpg

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dwheeler99
Contributor
Contributor
Exactly right: the invoice is coming from PayPal, not the scammer. PayPal is sending an invoice with a trademarked logo image that is hosted on their domain. At the very least, PayPal should be screening the logos that are being used on invoices. It is a trivial thing to do from a software standpoint. One might argue that PayPal is being negligent in not doing this in the same way one would claim Facebook was being negligent if they were to start letting inappropriate user-submitted content appear in news feeds.
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drewtrace
Contributor
Contributor

I recovered my money from my bank. Since Paypal debited my bank on this fake invoice scam from Paypal 

 

I told my bank it was fraud. After a lengthy debate my bank credited me the money. Paypal told me I had 

no chance of getting a credit even though I gave them all the information about the scam,

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winneymj
Contributor
Contributor

For what it is worth my wife phoned PayPal after disputing the transaction and having them close it with a response of "Based on our review, we found this transaction is consistent with your PayPal payment history." and she requested a dispute be opened as below to "did not receive merchandise".

Email content below:

Thanks for contacting us about your case. Based on the information we received we are changing the reason for filing this case. You submitted your claim because you did not receive your merchandise.

 

PayPal said the seller has 10 days to respond....which we know will not happen.

PayPal said they will refund if no response after the 10 days has elapsed.  Have 8 days to go.  Will let you know how it goes.

 

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makermeli
Contributor
Contributor

I also received one of these fake invoices, a few days before my GoDaddy account was about to renew. 

 

I don't know what to do with the fake invoice just sitting in my account. I forwarded it to <removed> twice and have received no response. No way to report or cancel it that I can see. Has anyone else had any luck?

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reven45
Contributor
Contributor

I just submitted the fake invoice we received to PayPal spam email provided here. Their 'security' team responded that it is not fake and there is nothing suspicious about it. So much for PayPal protection.

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winneymj
Contributor
Contributor

Does the logo on the invoice look genuine?  Look at the URL of the Logo and if it is coming from PayPal servers.  If it is then you might be able to argue the the person sending the invoice is violating copyright laws on PayPal servers by uploading a companies copyrighted material to PayPal servers and therefore they are in violation of PayPal terms.

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Dell14z
Frequent Contributor
Frequent Contributor

Never click on links for payment services. Log into the registrar and see what domains are expiring. 

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