On December 26, 2023, I received a text notification from PayPal asking me if I had made a transaction. I replied “2” for no, and received a follow up text saying that a fraud case would be started and that my account would be limited due to the suspicious activity. I then logged into my PayPal account and found that there were actually four fraudulent transactions, totaling several thousand dollars. I immediately called PayPal and spoke with someone. They told me they were unable to stop the transactions, but that they would open a fraud case for “unauthorized activity” for all four of them. Since PayPal showed the eBay order numbers for these fraudulent transactions, I called eBay on December 26 to get more details from their end. I was told that all four transactions were from four separate eBay accounts (none of them were mine or connected to me in any way), and that all the purchases took place within a 2-minute window. eBay immediately determined this as illegal activity and suspended all four accounts. However, eBay was unfortunately unable to stop the processing of the purchases. Next, I called the police department to start a crime report on December 26. I gave them all the information I had, including the address that these fraudulently purchased items were set to ship to. The address listed had been added as a guest address on December 26 by the criminal at the time the fraudulent transactions took place, and is an address I am not and have never been associated with. I saw that the four fraudulent transactions were set to pull from my checking account that I had linked to PayPal, so next I called my bank for advice (also on December 26). They instructed me to reduce the amount of money in my checking account so that when these fraudulent charges tried to pull, they would not be able to. Since PayPal was unable to take money from my checking account, they then sent the fraudulent charges to my other linked payment method, which was my credit card. However, because of the large dollar amounts of the transactions, only two charges went onto the card before I hit my credit limit. Currently, the two charges that hit my credit card are being resolved as a chargeback. However, the other two charges were unable to pull from any payment method and have now been sitting as a negative balance on my account. I am trying to get this negative balance cleared so that I can continue to use my PayPal account, as it is now disabled because of the negative balance. I have called PayPal 15+ times in the last two months trying to resolve this case. The initial “unauthorized activity” fraud case from December 26 was denied. PayPal support then switched these cases to “item not received” (though let me reiterate that these were not items I had ever purchased), stating that this was the next step toward getting my cases resolved. The “item not received” cases were also denied because the sellers were able to provide tracking to the address provided, which was again not an address I have ever been associated with. So, PayPal support then switched the case back to “unauthorized activity” and resubmitted the case on February 18. Again though, the case was denied. I have found other forum posts and it is clear I am not the only person to have had this issue. I am at a loss of what to do next. My PayPal balance is over $3000 in the negative and I am unable to use the account until the balance is removed. The negative balance is a result of fraudulent activity that PayPal’s own automated system detected and alerted me of, and that I reported right away. Has anyone had any luck resolving an issue like this without having to pay the balance?
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