after writing my post above I started to browse the security and fraud forum linked at the PayPal Help Community and even on the first page saw several posts asking basically the same question and one mega thread with 99 pages of people asking the same question. whatever algorithm PayPal uses is broken. the resolution system is broken. any of the official agents who answer this question have no real power to do anything, only repeat the scripted response without having any actual insight into any of these particular cases. sorry, we are all pretty much hung out to dry
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