another user doing fraud

[zalty]

a few months ago someone paid me for an item or service I don't offer. i immediately tried to refund and cancel the transaction and couldn't, because the money was being held. so I opened a dispute. over the next the few weeks the person keeps harassing me for a refund I can't give because I had $0 in my account, and their money was still pending. so they open a dispute as well. a few messages and emails were exchanged between us and I took plenty of screenshots. they wanted me to refund them the money before it cleared. meaning I would be coming out of pocket for it. and once their transaction got sorted they would have received their initial payment back as well. so I held out until I was able to cancel/refund the transaction. and a few days later MY account gets flagged for suspicious activity. and I have to jump through hoops to be able to continue using it. now this person is still interacting with my account somehow. cancelling old payment request. they claimed I was lying and keeping their money so they kept requesting money from me. it was a huge hassle and very annoying and I felt like PayPal wrongly took it out on me when I handled it the only way I was able to, without being scammed. had this happened to anyone else? how is this person still allowed on here? sorry if I wasn't clear enough, can answer further questions if needed. it's just very frustrating that I'm still getting emails from PayPal regarding this person.

[PayPal_Meghan]

Hello @zalty, 

Thanks for joining the PayPal Community! 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience regarding a payment sent to you in error. I know how upset that would make me as well. If you receive a Goods & Services payment, even if it's placed on hold, you should have the option to refund it. However, the fee is not refunded, which might have been why you were running into an issue. If you don't have the total amount in your balance to cover a refund, including the fee, the money to cover the full payment will debit from your bank. If a dispute is opened on the payment, you will also have the option to refund through the dispute following the instructions on our Help Center here: How do I issue a refund in a dispute? 

If your account was limited due to what happened, you can also find a guide on how to lift the limitation on our Help Center. Limitations are placed when we want to ensure the security of customers' accounts. It can happen pretty commonly if you've just started receiving payments or received something different from usual. They're to make sure nothing is out of the ordinary. I apologize for the hassle it caused you. 

It also sounds like you're worried that the sender has managed to log into your account. If so, please file an unauthorized dispute so we can investigate it. You'll also want to reset your password and security questions if you haven't already. If they're only sending and canceling payment requests that they sent, then they most likely haven't logged into your account. They could cancel any payment requests between the two of you from their side. 

I hope I was able to help sort through some of the confusion caused by the payment you received. You can contact PayPal Customer Support by sending a DM on Twitter or Instagram or a PM on Facebook. Support may also be reached by clicking 'Contact' at the bottom of any PayPal webpage. 

- Meghan