Wrong amount scam

[bcarne]

Hello,

I have recently bought an item using Paypal and the seller asked me if I could provide a copy of the Paypal transaction receipt. I did provide it but hiding my credit card section. A couple of days later I have received an email from Paypal saying that I had opened a case for a wrong amount. As I had never opened the dispute, I immediately closed it. At this point I am pretty sure that the seller is trying to scam me as he managed to open the case and this has been closed and I will never receive the item. As I have never opened the case myself I think Paypal should be able to help me with this as this cannot be considered a legit closed case but an account breach. How do you think I should approach the issue here?

Thanks!

[sharpiemarker]

@bcarne 

The scam seller asked for info that you provided which enabled the seller to call PayPal pretending to be you, opening cases with wrong amounts. PayPal needs to beef up their identity verification when customers call to open cases. 

Call customer services and explain this to them. Hopefully they can reopen the dispute to get your money back if you didn’t receive what you ordered.

[bcarne]

Thank you so much.

Calling them tomorrow and keeping you posted here.

[bcarne]

Update from today's nightmare.

I called PayPal and clearly stated that the seller is a scammer. The case was changed into "Item not received".

The seller tried to contact me probably to ask me to close the case and I haven't replied.

This looks like the end of the story but it isn't.

This afternoon he somehow managed to change again the status from "Item not received" to "Wrong amount" and (hear hear) add two phone numbers.

How the f*** is possible that one can make such modifications to the account with only the information available in the transaction receipt?

And if you are about to ask: no he could not hack my account as I changed my password already yesterday to probably the most complex in the world.

What a nightmare...

[sharpiemarker]

---

@bcarne wrote:

Update from today's nightmare.

I called PayPal and clearly stated that the seller is a scammer. The case was changed into "Item not received".

The seller tried to contact me probably to ask me to close the case and I haven't replied.

This looks like the end of the story but it isn't.

This afternoon he somehow managed to change again the status from "Item not received" to "Wrong amount" and (hear hear) add two phone numbers.

How the f*** is possible that one can make such modifications to the account with only the information available in the transaction receipt?

And if you are about to ask: no he could not hack my account as I changed my password already yesterday to probably the most complex in the world.

What a nightmare...

---

Ugh, sorry to hear this.

They don’t call them scammers for nothing. They will do whatever it takes and are always ahead of the curve/the authorities/companies. It’s a scammers’ everyday job to figure out a way to scam.

Contact customer service again and have them put a note on your case ID number to beware of someone else calling pretending to be you changing the case to wrong amount from item not received. 

[bcarne]

Finally giving some news on this topic.

I haven't posted for a while as I got paranoid that the scammer could have access to this forum and know what to expect in terms of next steps on my side but I promised to give an update and here I am.

The scam seller managed to interact again with my account and closing my case at least twice by calling PayPal and pretending to be me. He also faked a shipping on the Shop app (obviously never received any item and neither a tracking number was ever provided).

I ended up asking PayPal to:

- Compare my voice during the call with the one in the previous call by which the case was close

- Do not accept any closure of the case from a phone number other than mine

- Reopen the dispute as "Item not received"

Once the case was reopened, the scam seller did not manage to close the case anymore due to the above restrictions.

PayPal closed the case in my favor and I got my money back.

Main takeaway: NEVER NEVER NEVER provide your transaction receipt to the seller. He has enough information from PayPal and does not need anything else. I know that this states the obvious and it was for me too but I though the receipt did not have enough information to pretend being the buyer. It was.

Main suggestion for PayPal: enforce better user verification during a phone call. The information in a single receipt should not be enough but the caller should show a consistent knowledge of the account activity and/or user information to perform sensitive actions (such as closing a case).