A well-crafted scam. The How it works site reports that many users were surprised to receive transfers from strangers on the online payment site PayPal, by far the most used by the French. These payments, welcome at first glance, turned out to be scams.
Once the payment has been made to the victim’s account, the scammers contact them to request reimbursement. They claim an error and count on his good faith. With a bit of persuasion, the scammers suggest sending the money back using the app’s “Send money between friends” option.
Two payment categories
Selecting this category allows you not to pay fees, depending on the payment method chosen. However, personal payments are not covered under PayPal Purchase Protection. They cannot therefore be refunded.
For his part, the scammer took care to select the “Payment for an item or service” category when making his allegedly erroneous payment to his victim. This precaution allows him to obtain reimbursement by reporting his error to PayPal. He thus doubles the stake, if the victim falls into the trap and also reimburses him. In any case, the criminal does not lose any money.
The “issue a refund” option
You should know that to reimburse a person who has indeed made a transfer error, the best is to favor the “Payment for an item or service” option or even better, to select the payment concerned in the history and click on “issue a refund”, mentioning the amount.
More generally, PayPal recommends never paying suspicious invoices or payment requests and reporting them by connecting to the dedicated site or application. “To report a suspicious email or site, forward it to [email protected] and we will examine it for you,” specifies the American company on its site.
