I received messages on Facebook messenger off who I believed to be a work friend. They asked me to receive a payment to my PayPal account due to them being locked out of their account for entering their password wrong. They then wanted me to withdraw the money to my bank account to forward onto them through a bank transfer. I agreed and received and amount into my PayPal account. I do not normally receive payments into my account, and this payment wasn't held for fraud checks so I withdrew the money and sent to the account requested. I later realised this was not who I thought I was speaking to and that I had been scammed. The money was from a hacked PayPal account and when the person realised they had a unauthorised transaction they disputed it. PayPal investigated the dispute and refunded the "buyer". I now have a negative balance on my account and are being asked to restore my balance by adding funds. My bank are investigating the fraud and have contacted the beneficiary account, but all I can do is wait for the outcome. PayPal are saying I must resolve my balance or it will be passed to a debt collection agency to recover. I don't have the money to pay back and am worried it may escalate to debt collectors and extra fees be demanded from me. Has anybody else had anything similar happen and if so how was it resolved? Any advice is welcome. Thanks for reading.
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