This is a bizarre case and I am grabbing at straws to solve it. Any thoughts or ideas will be greatly appreciated. It is also a bot convoluted. Here are the facts:
1. I have a business PayPal account that received $9,990.21 from an individual for Goods and Services.
2. I know the individual and he has used his credit card to buy art from me in the past, but my art website uses Stripe for payments and I never see the credit card, Stripe just wires the money to my bank account.
3. When I got notice from PayPal that I received that odd and large sum of money, I immediately called him and asked what it was for. He said he had no knowledge of the payment and did not use PayPal or have a PayPal account.
4. With that reply from him, I just left the money sitting in my PayPal account and was waiting for some kind of scam to develop.
5. About a month later, I get a phone call from his wife asking me about the charge on their credit card statement. It had my business name, not my art business. I told her about getting the money and immediately calling her husband and waiting to see what developed.
6. Seeing that it was not a scam but was just some bizarre glitch I said I'd refund the money. But since PayPal had taken a 2.9% fee, nearly $300 I told them that if I did the refund through PayPal, I'd be out that money and it wasn't my fault, so I would send them a check for the net amount I received. I then transferred the net amount received into my business bank account and mailed them a check for that amount.
7. So far, fine, water under the bridge. But it bugs me to no end not knowing how this happened.
8. Today I did some research regarding making payments to someone or some company with PayPal and it seems that you have to have a PayPal account to do so. Or your can do it without an account if you have an invoice from them. A third way is maybe if you go to the merchant's website, you can check out with a credit card without having a PayPal account. But I don't have a website that the public can use to buy my products.
So, I would love to hear any ideas or opinions on this dilemma. The person I am dealing with is a long time friend, ex business partner and a collector of my art. He is also very old and has been ill and in the hospital. Oh, also of importance I should mention that he is very, very wealthy so it is not some kind of financial scam that he would be doing! - Thanks for any help and taking the time to read through this. Oh, can I get PayPal to give me any more detail about the transaction, such as was the "buyer" a PayPal account holder and what exactly did they buy?
Thanks and sorry, really grabbing at straws here.
