This might be a weird question:
Late one night in July I was browsing the web and found an online hifi store selling an old model of Klipsch speakers at an amazing price. The store only accepted Paypal payment. I ordered the speakers for just under $300. Next day I thought the price was too good to be true. I returned to the site and some red flags were obvious: The store phone number was disconnected, the cancel purchase link led to a bouncing email, the site was only a few month's old. So I opened a dispute with PayPal and explained my concerns. Within maybe eight days my PayPal account was refunded the money. Two weeks later the website was down. I had expected that I had lost everything - so everything's great, right?
What I didn't know ...
I have three credit cards, one of which I only use as a spare, when travelling. All three cards are setup as backup funding sources on my Paypal account. Two days after opening the dispute with PayPal two transactions appeared on the spare credit card account, with the merchant listed as EBay and the amounts approx $3000 and $4000. Apparently these were to purchase a Chanel handbag from a Japanese Fashion store. The bag was to be shipped by Fedex. The shipping label had part of my real address along with an incorrect telephone number.
So on the same day that I was congratulating myself for getting a PayPal refund, a $7000 handbag was shipped to an address nearby my home.
My question - is this a bizarre coincidence - two fraudulent transactions affecting same person on same day? Or might there be a connection?
