Scammer asking me to update my account to business

[Robman77]

Hi all,

A 'buyer' told me that he had paid me £200 by Paypal for an item I had for sale on Facebook Marketplace but nothing was received. I then received a message supposedly from Paypal to say that I would have to update my account to get this money. The buyer then told me he had sent the £200 again. This was followed by a 'Paypal' message basically saying that to get the £400 I would have to refund £200 first! 

How can people be allowed to try to get away with this fraud? It would be so easy to do something silly and lose hard earned money to crooks but the crooks never seem to be caught and brought to justice. 

[kernowlass]

@Robman77 

As they are probably working from an internet cafe somewhere in Asia or Africa then highly unlikely they can be ''brought to justice'' !!

SCAM

You never pay any upfront fee as a seller or to receive payments into a Paypal account.

Ignore scammers that send fake Paypal emails telling you that you need to pay an upfront fee to verify/upgrade to a business account/or any other reason to accept a payment.

You would certainly never have to send funds especially via another payment processor/bitcoins/ or tokens/vouchers of any sort.

Any fee is auto deducted by Paypal at the same instant the remainder of the payment is credited to your Paypal account balance.

No funds in your balance = you have not yet been paid, even pending/held payments will still show in your Paypal account activity.

[Robman77]

Thank you

[Robman77]

Can PayPal not do anything to track down and prosecute these scammers? 

[kernowlass]

@Robman77 

You want paypal  to turn into Interpol and fly to Africa/Asia somewhere > locate an anonymous person using an anonymous internet cafe in an anonymous location (using VPN) and get them to return your money that you willingly sent them as a gift?