Hi Community,
Until recently, I had my bank account linked to my PayPal account. In the last three months, I've had several debits (thousands of $$) from my checking bank account going to a PayPal account that was not mine (ACH transfer). The transactions on my bank statement mentioned “Business to Business ACH PayPal Debit”. I called PayPal several times and they could not find those transactions in my PayPal account activity. Also, my bank had no idea who made the transfer except that the people had my checking account & routing numbers (findable on anyone's written checks). Since I did not immediately alert my bank about those fraudulent transactions , my bank is not willing to refund them. If those transactions went through a credit card account, I probably would have better chances of getting my money back. After doing some research, there seems to be a lot of people who have fallen victim of this fraud called “PayPal Prenote Scam”. From what I read online – “Scammers are creating fraudulent PayPal accounts and linking them to victims’ leaked banking information. Once payment information has been linked to an account, the scammers will normally make several test withdrawals — these appear as a “Prenote” (prenotification) on the victims’ bank statements.
The test withdrawals will often be for $0, but they may be as much as a few cents or dollars. What the scammers are doing by making these small withdrawals, is they are testing the legitimacy of the leaked banking information, and also hoping to not arouse too much suspicion. After all, it’s tough to get too concerned about a transaction for $0 or a few cents, even if you don’t recognize them.
However, once the scammers are sure the leaked banking credentials (account & routing numbers) are legitimate and PayPal seems to be letting the withdrawals go through without issue, they will begin to make much larger withdrawals, potentially completely emptying victims’ bank accounts in the process! Often, the fraudulent transfers are of the same amount and done on the say day each month, making them look like a typical recurring subscription payment. Some victims do not even have a PayPal account. Others may have a PayPal account, which then creates a precedent. Therefore, one's bank assumes that there is already a relationship between the bank account holder & PayPal, and consequently does not raise any alerts when the fraudulent transactions come through. Since one does not need a social security number or a name to open a PayPal account, some victims have not been able to get their money back because their financial institutions did not consider it as identity theft......"
Has anyone seen or heard about this ?
Any words of wisdom in regards to possibly getting my money back ?
Thanks for any feedback,
Pierre
