Money unexpectedly in my PayPal account..

Rainmaker said:
Scammer sends you a sum of money from a stolen/compromised account. They say 'Oops, sorry - can you send it back to me at newaccount because my other one is overdrawn/locked/lost'. You 'refund' them and then PayPal says "BTW, you had £150 of stolen cash in your account from stolenaccount, we want it back thanks.". Now the scammer has your £150 cash, and you're down a second £150 repaying PayPal/the original account holder for the money the scammer originally gave you. Because it's in two transactions, PP say 'You received stolen funds in transaction 1, you separately paid a totally different account £150 - nothing to do with us, you still owe stolenaccount £150.'...
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Yeah I believe that is the scam

If it was me I'd just let it sit there.

If it's a genuine mistake (it happens!) then the person will surely contact you. Then it leave it up to paypal to handle.
 
Just to update on this. When I contacted PayPal I explained I was not expecting these funds, wasn't sure if it was suspicious etc and they were not very helpful and said something along the lines of the payment is complete. So I just left it sat in my account to see if it vanished or whatever.

This morning I get an email from the email that sent the payment saying "Did you receive anything from PayPal? Please let me know. Thank you".

Now I presume so long as I go in to PayPal and just press the refund payment button on the transaction then I am safe? It sounds like its probably an accidental payment but I'm still cautious about it.
 
Zaphan58 said:
Just to update on this. When I contacted PayPal I explained I was not expecting these funds, wasn't sure if it was suspicious etc and they were not very helpful and said something along the lines of the payment is complete. So I just left it sat in my account to see if it vanished or whatever.

This morning I get an email from the email that sent the payment saying "Did you receive anything from PayPal? Please let me know. Thank you".

Now I presume so long as I go in to PayPal and just press the refund payment button on the transaction then I am safe? It sounds like its probably an accidental payment but I'm still cautious about it.
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If that is all that was emailed to you then it sounds suspiciously short IMO. If I'd sent funds to the wrong email address I'd have contacted the person with a bit more detail around what happened and if it could be sent back.
 
OldKitMan said:
If that is all that was emailed to you then it sounds suspiciously short IMO. If I'd sent funds to the wrong email address I'd have contacted the person with a bit more detail around what happened and if it could be sent back.
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I agree it is suspiciously short. i'd be tempted to say no, or I'd ignore the e-mails and just leave the money, let them contact paypal and sort it out. Paypal will most likely refund it to them if it was a genuine mistake.
 
gord said:
How would that work? I mean, PayPal would literally have the record of you sending the money back.
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They get you to send the money back to a different paypal email address and then later the original one is clawed back as it was a stolen card or something.
 
Does seem a bit strange for them to have taken 6 weeks to email you. If it was a genuine person who made a genuine mistake, i fail to believe they would take 6 weeks to realise they've sent it to the wrong person.

I think i would still leave it in the paypal account for paypal to deal with.

What would happen if there was a genuine mistake here? The sender would eventually contact paypal to say that the transaction went to the wrong person, and then PayPal would investigate and reverse the transaction.
 
After that long they ask, its not as though they cant see in their paypal history where they sent money, and surely if it was a real transaction just to a wrong email address, it would have been checked within a day of the real recipient saying I havent got anything - you did send it to [email protected] didnt you?
 
I had something similar a couple of years ago - The thread is here although in my case, there was no reply from the email address that sent it to me and Paypal said there was nothing suspicious about it. It was also a lot more, £1904.

Two weeks later it vanished. There was no trace of it and nothing in my Paypal history that showed either the deposit or the removal. It just disappeared.
 
OldKitMan said:
If that is all that was emailed to you then it sounds suspiciously short IMO. If I'd sent funds to the wrong email address I'd have contacted the person with a bit more detail around what happened and if it could be sent back.
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That is just about it. They did send one a few minutes later that just said "If so could you please respond to PayPal since it went to the wrong email address."

Thing is I have not had anything come through from PayPal on this. So I just responded to them and said I have not had anything come through from PayPal, if you ask them to contact me I will sort it out with them.

Agreed though I've no idea why it would have taken them this long to notice.
 
Rainmaker said:
Scammer sends you a sum of money from a stolen/compromised account. They say 'Oops, sorry - can you send it back to me at newaccount because my other one is overdrawn/locked/lost'. You 'refund' them and then PayPal says "BTW, you had £150 of stolen cash in your account from stolenaccount, we want it back thanks.". Now the scammer has your £150 cash, and you're down a second £150 repaying PayPal/the original account holder for the money the scammer originally gave you. Because it's in two transactions, PP say 'You received stolen funds in transaction 1, you separately paid a totally different account £150 - nothing to do with us, you still owe stolenaccount £150.'...
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well if you send £150 to a totally different account to the one that originally sent you it, you only have yourself to blame
 
MadMan-JaMeS said:
I agree it is suspiciously short. i'd be tempted to say no, or I'd ignore the e-mails and just leave the money, let them contact paypal and sort it out. Paypal will most likely refund it to them if it was a genuine mistake.
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This. Except I wouldn’t be tempted. I’d just leave it, ignore all emails and not do a thing. The whole situation is screaming “scam”.
 
Semple said:
Does seem a bit strange for them to have taken 6 weeks to email you. If it was a genuine person who made a genuine mistake, i fail to believe they would take 6 weeks to realise they've sent it to the wrong person.
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I wouldn't know but there are folk on these forums who claim to never check their bank statements because it's not worth their time. Could be someone as lax as that.
 
Ok it sounds a little less fishy to me now. They have emailed again and said they have been in contact with PayPal. They say PayPal have asked that I open a ticket with them and ask to cancel the transaction. So long as this goes through PayPal I can't see there being a problem?
 
Zaphan58 said:
Ok it sounds a little less fishy to me now. They have emailed again and said they have been in contact with PayPal. They say PayPal have asked that I open a ticket with them and ask to cancel the transaction. So long as this goes through PayPal I can't see there being a problem?
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Nah, sod that. They made the transfer, they can file the ticket. I cannot stress enough that you not get involved beyond notifying PayPal and letting them sort it out.
 
Theophany said:
Nah, sod that. They made the transfer, they can file the ticket. I cannot stress enough that you not get involved beyond notifying PayPal and letting them sort it out.
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From what they have said (for whatever its worth) it sounds like they have opened a ticket and PayPal have told them it need to be me to open a ticket with them and have it cancelled. Anyone know if that sounds true? I have not done so yet.
 
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