We purchase some of our machined parts from China and have long relationships with manufacturers there. We ordered parts and asked for current PayPal account information via email. We received account instructions via return email and PayPal'd the funds. The receipt received from PayPal seemed odd so emailed back a copy of it to our supplier who then confirmed that all was correct. The goods were to be sent to a second Chinese supplier for finishing. When supplier #2 indicated that the parts had never been received they called supplier #1 via telephone and learned that #1 had never received our payment and that their (number 1's) recent emails to us had gone unanswered. So what had happened? #1's email had been hijacked and the hackers had inserted their PayPal account information in place of the suppliers. Our email asking for confirmation of the suspicious PayPal receipt was answered, not by the supplier, but by the hacker.
We filed a notice with PayPal on-line spelling out some of the details of the fraud but never received any confirmation, in any form, of our submital. This seemed odd as well. It would seem that PayPal would be interested, at the least, in the name of the fraudulent account so we called a day later. After wasting some time with the PayPal telephone robot I asked to speak to a human and was transferred to another recording that informed me that due to Covid 19, no humans were available to speak to me. No "leave a message and we'll get back with you" and not even a "please try again later". And that's where it stands as of today. By the way, as of some twenty-five days later, supplier #1 was still unaware that their email system had been compromised and only through the efforts of ourselves and supplier #2 was it discovered.
