Money in my account, Paypal scam?

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Twice in the last 3 weeks I have had money deposited into my PP account from people I do not know. I had an email yesterday from one of them saying it was a mistake and asking me to contact them. The story was the money was intended for someone else to pay for Cancer treatment!

The cancer treatment bit really makes me suspect this is phony, especially in Canada.

Can anyone confirm this scam?
 
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Originally Posted By: expat
I have had money deposited into my PP account from people I do not know.


Looks like I'll have to open a PayPal account.
 
well unlike you civilized canucks, i can confirm there is a huge amount of medical begging here in the us.

I read some article that the majority of gofundme campaigns are for medical begging. So that is just a snapshot statistic to show how much crowdfunding for medical goes on (by no means is gofundme the only path).
What this says about the US healthcare is way more complex then Id care to get into.

but as far as your if your email got confused with an US email then it may be a legitimate story. i know across the world there is someguy that has my email except with a dot or a dash, and i get his signups once in awhile.


I dont see how this is a scam as paypal is a service not your bank so you just reject the transaction but that doesnt allow them to make more transactions against you. Plus paypal will be around so you can make them cover any unauthorized actions.

If you want you can alert paypal and ask them to confirm.
 
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It sounds like they want you to "connect" electronically with them through your Paypal account so they can steal your identity. It's a SCAM!
 
I would contact Paypal directly and not through any link provided to confirm. Go another computer even to do this if they had possibly left something to gather info.
 
very good point. be careful of phishing links. and only login by typing in the url and not by following links you get.
 
sounds to me like they're using a stolen credit card or bank account to transfer the money into your account. Afterwards, they are hoping you'll transfer the money to them voluntary and by the time the real owner of the money finds out and files a chargeback the scammerswould already sucked the money out through you legitimately and you would lose the money because paypal would have chargeback your account for the losses.
No one makes such "mistakes", this is very similar to the nigerian check scam but through a paypal version.
Also log in directly to paypal not through any email links to make sure the money is actually there just to make sure its not a spoofing scam as well.
 
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I had this happen to me 12+yrs ago. The early days of PayPal. A fella was trying to pay for an eBay transaction and got the paypal/email address wrong and accidentally wired me $500. I too was leery and held onto it for a week or so. Poor dude kept emailing me so I simply wired it back to him. I didn't have any of my own money in the account and I've never heard of someone getting anything out of your CC account or bank through PayPal w/out your consent.
 
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I have not responded or followed any links. But I did log in to my PP account and it appears I received $152 3 weeks ago and $230 last week (the amounts are not even they include xx cents). Yesterday I received the email from the guy advising me of the mistake.

I stinks of a scam to me. But I do not wish to take money by mistake. Could the money be charged back after 30 days or so?

Each transaction was from a different person. So if this were real, What are the chances of that!
 
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Was it "gifted" to you so you got the whole amount they sent and didn't pay the ~2.5% Paypal fee?
 
There is no chance it is legitimate or it being a mistake. It can be charged back even in 120 days with some banks.
 
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It probably is a scam in the vein of a well known refund scam. Unless it's an auction payment I don't believe PayPal allows a direct refund option.

So what they're probably going to ask you to do is refund them out of your own balance to account for the fact that they accidentally sent you that money. Problem is PayPal will contact you later saying the money came from a stolen source and take that money out of your account. You've now lost twice that amount, they effectively "laundered" that stolen money by getting it from you as a payment you legitimately sent them of your own will.
 
I have been a PayPal merchant since the beginning and never received a dime I didn't have coming.
You better call Paypal direct- they are easy to deal with and get this resolved. I fear that you are now a target and they need to investigate it ASAP. Good luck.

Originally Posted By: expat
I have not responded or followed any links. But I did log in to my PP account and it appears I received $152 3 weeks ago and $230 last week (the amounts are not even they include xx cents). Yesterday I received the email from the guy advising me of the mistake.

I stinks of a scam to me. But I do not wish to take money by mistake. Could the money be charged back after 30 days or so?

Each transaction was from a different person. So if this were real, What are the chances of that!
 
Also let's not forget that if they accidentally sent it to you, you owe them nothing more than to not touch that money since it isn't yours. The safest option is to ignore them, leave it up to them to contact PayPal and get their money back.

If they made a mistake they need to learn their lesson anyway about being more careful, even though I don't see how they could possibly make a mistake.

Just ignore the e-mails and money. If they want their money back have them get PayPal to get it for them.
 
If they sent the money through a gofundme link or whatever it would have linked to the correct paypal address. This isn't something someone wrote on a cocktail napkin and missspelled ".ca" for ".com".

This is a 100% scam. As others said let them find a way to get the money back out of your account through paypal.
 
Originally Posted By: zvm77us
There is no chance it is legitimate or it being a mistake. It can be charged back even in 120 days with some banks.


This. Scam for sure! The cancer treatment story was just the icing on the cake.
 
I would tell the sender by email to take his issue up with Paypal. I would not refund the money directly to him. I'd be leery of one of those possible West African or Eastern European money scams.
 
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