PAYMENT ON HOLD

[Farrukh94]

I received email from [removed] saying payment is on hold and will be released once items sent. I don’t see any payment in my app. Is this valid email for paypal ? Should i be viewing payment in my app ?

[jmarc_38]

hello @Farrukh94 , I think it is fraudulent, especially if there is a link in it.

if there is a link, do not use it!

forward the email received, without addition or modification to spoof@paypal.com

on your side, if you expect money and it is not displayed in your paypal activity, it does not exist.
but the question is: have you made a sale, and are you expecting a payment?

[Farrukh94]

Hi thank you for replying. yes i sold an item on facebook marketplace. I received an email from [removed] It hasn’t got any link there. It asks me to send back the postage evidence and then funds will be released

[jmarc_38]

@Farrukh94 

For me, this is not the procedure.
during a sale, you receive the funds on paypal.
and on paypal you put on the money received, a valid tracking number or proof of shipment processing.

[Farrukh94]

So does this mean that even if I haven’t actually sent the items yet, the payment should still appear in my paypal if it has been made by the receiver?

[jmarc_38 · Accepted solution]

@Farrukh94 

yes, the money must be in your paypal account.
no sending, as long as the money is not above.
once the money is received on paypal, you put on the transaction a tracking number for an object or proof of treatment for an intangible good.

[Farrukh94]

Thank you so much for your help. I can’t thank you enough seriously.

[mpogr]

We had the same issue and ALMOST fell for the scam. The scam is of a new kind, as they don't try to steal your account or money, they just try to get you send a vluable item to a freight forwarding company in the US without paying for it. The item then gets redirected to the real address. They most likely use hacked Facebook accounts for these activities.

We have done a few things to stop this fraudulent activity:

1. Reported the account to Facebook (most likely a hacked account, they will switch to using a different one).

2. Reported to the freight forwarding company the details of their client involved in that activity. Unfortunately, athough they have the real person's name and contact details, they most likely won't be bothered reporting these to law enforcement.

3. The domain from which the email pretending to be originating from PayPal was actually provided by Google Domains service. This is why it wasn't recognised as phishing/spam by Gmail and passed all their filters as if it were a genuine email. This surprised me, because I'd suppose Google would have better contols in place and would not allow creating domains with names so similar to genuine PayPal. I even suspect the perpetrators had some inside help at Google, otherwise I find it difficult to explain for it to stay operational for at least 8 month. I reported this to Google Domains abuse email, threatening to report on them if they don't take an action on it. They haven't replied, but I can see now the domain is no longer active, so it seems like they have acted on my complaint. I'm just wondering how many more people have been scammed during those months the domain was active.

Bottom line: no money in your PayPal account, don't send anything!