Fraudulent payment to "Steve Armory"

[pathfinder027]

My wife (who does not have a PayPal account separate from mine) received an email 5/18/23 from a "John [removed]" stating,

"Greetings from PayPal

You sent a payment of $265.00 to Steve Armory.  This charge will appear on your statement as "Steve Armory, Inc."

Please find below the details about your Purchase:

Your Order Number is PN001500Q0T. Please quote this Order Number in all correspondence.

Date:  May 18, 2023

Total: $265.00

Please note that it may take a little while for this payment to appear in the Recent Activity list on your Account Overview.

If you have any further questions, please cal [Removed. Phone #s not permitted]

Thank you for doing business with us.

PayPal Inc."

It all looks so "official", but to me it appears to be a scam.  My wife did NOT call that number, nor did she respond in any way to the email, except to tell me about it.  There is no such charge as of today (5/28/23) on my PayPal account.  I did a reverse lookup of the phone number on callcenter.com and got the indication it was a fraudulent number.  Here is the result:

User Complaints fo[Removed. Phone #s not permitted]/h2>

Caller name: Fake Pay-Pal

Caller type: Scammer/Fraudster

[kernowlass]

@pathfinder027 

Yep, scam.

If its a spoof then NEVER USE ANY LINK OR ANY PHONE NUMBER.

Firstly if the email/text addressed you as ''Dear Member'' / ''Customer'' / ''Client'' OR your ''email address'' then that confirms its a spoof as paypal would address you by your full name eg Dear John Smith.

Secondly if there was a link OR attachment in that email/text to ''cancel'' any transaction or ''confirm'' any details then again it would be a spoof.

Also if they ask you to call the number in the email then it would be fake paypal agents trying to scam you for money to 'fix' something. 

If there was a problem with your account Paypal would not ask you to click on an unsafe link in an email / download an attachment OR phone them on a number in an email, they would direct you to log in normally and go to the resolution or the message centre for more information.

More info here >>
https://www.paypal.com/us/smarthelp/article/how-do-i-spot-and-report-a-fake%2C-fraudulent%2C-or-phis...
https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/security/suspicious-activity