Received invoice from one seller which I didn't make any purchase. Is it a scam?

MichaelCHK
Contributor
Contributor

Hi all. I received a notification from PayPal that someone sent me an invoice to make a payment of USD 500 for purchasing a anti virus software which I didn't make. Could I just leave it like that with out paying or how do I cancel or report this?

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Kdohman21
Contributor
Contributor

jpweeks
Member
Member

I had the same thing happen, but there's no cancel button anywhere on the invoice; there is only a pay button.

Is there a reason there's no option for me to cancel the invoice?

 

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Temp20220716B
New Community Member

That's what I want to know as well. 

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deedeeko
New Community Member

I have the same situation.  There is no way to cancel the fake invoice fore $479, only a way to pay it.  I am afraid that PayPal might auto pay it.

 

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@deedeeko 


Sounds like a scam money request or invoice.

Scammers harvest email addresses and send out those requests hoping some email addresses are linked to paypal accounts and the unsuspecting recipient 'may' pay them not realising they are scams.

If there is a cancel option then cancel it, if not ignore it and hopefully it should time out at some point. 

As long as you don't click to pay it then no money should be transferred.


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shepdave
Contributor
Contributor

It happened to me today as well. I made the mistake of calling the phone number in the invoice, but I did have the presence of mind not to download any software to give the guy on the other end access to my computer.

 

After digging around here on the forum and elsewhere on the internet, I was able to log into my PayPal account in a desktop browser on my laptop, select the invoice, and cancel it. I couldn't cancel on a mobile device, but on a desktop browser it was easy. As soon as I did that, the invoice amount had a strikethrough on it when I viewed my activity page. The invoice listing now says "cancelled."

 

There's an hour and a half of my life I won't get back, but at least I didn't pay somebody $499 for an "Apple Watch."

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EyeDocMD
Contributor
Contributor

Nope... I spent hours trying to get help from PayPal support with this. Finally spoke with a manager and they said there's no way that I or the support team can do anything to remove these pending invoices. I was told by the manager it will remain on the home page of my PayPal app as a 'bill due this week' in perpetuity.

 

Great.

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kernowlass
Esteemed Advisor
Esteemed Advisor

@EyeDocMD 

 

Odd because they normally 'time out' at 30 days if they remain unpaid.


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PayPal_JonK
Moderator
Moderator

Hello @cnclng_cwrdc, @Luke-Luke, @kernowlass, @EyeDocMD, and everyone else!

 

Thank you everyone for visiting the PayPal Community! I'm sorry to hear you've run into some issues with an unexpected and unwanted invoice. I can understand how concerning this kind of request is. If you click on the invoice to view it, you should see the option to cancel it. When tapping on the invoice in the mobile app, make sure you're not selecting "Pay", but you're tapping the area around merchant name to the left of the "Pay" option. Once the Invoice Details pop up, you should see the option to "Cancel" or "Cancel Invoice". 

 

There's also the new option to select a check-box to "Report Spam" after you click "Cancel"/"Cancel Invoice" in the pop-up box. There's not the option to "Report Spam" on Money Requests as of right now, but there should be that option when cancelling invoices. Unfortunately, these don't time-out on their own, but that cancel option should be available for all invoices. Just please be careful when canceling these to make sure you don't accidentally click "Pay" when cancelling the invoice. 

 

Best wishes to you all and thank you again for visiting the PayPal Community Forum! Have a wonderful day, 

 

 - Jon K


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Problem -  the fraudulent invoice is a bit older and you did not cancel it when it appeared, then when you try to cancel it you get a message "invoice is no longer available".

However the invoice still appears on your activities page.

PayPal call in help person told me that the fraud invoice will expire in 30 days from when it appeared and will then vanish from the activities page.

I suggested that they add a message about expiration to the "invoice is no longer available" message.

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