The coronavirus quarantine does not appear to be a truce for cyber scammers and scammers. Last weekend several Forocoches users reported in the forum a new fraud attempt, a new type where PayPal is the protagonist. The scam in question is not new, but rather a variation on the famous Nigerian scam . Yes it is his form of execution, because until now no cases of this type had been reported. The objective of it is nothing more than to obtain direct credit from our PayPal account through social engineering and a series of processes that we will explain below.
If you receive 100 euros in PayPal from another user, be suspicious
30, 50, 60 and even 100 euros. Apparently, the behavior of the scammers is similar in all cases.
First, the originating account sends a refund of a certain amount of money to our account. This amount will appear in our account as 'Not confirmed' or 'Pending' . The reason for this is because the account that has transferred this amount to us is a professional account. In fact, the amount refunded will have a small fee that corresponds to the PayPal return fee.
After receiving the refund, the professional account will send a request for money to our account for the same amount refunded “by accident”. Sometimes this request is accompanied by a message to give it greater credibility or to encourage the user to act in good faith.
At this point the scam begins. The request will not be made by the means that PayPal has enabled for these cases, but will be executed through the 'Request for money' option, an option that has nothing to do with the alleged refund made by the originating account and that, In general, no refund is allowed, as it is done voluntarily by the user.
Once the requested amount is transferred from the victim's account to the scammers' account, the initial refund will be canceled . Later, the amount will be completely removed from our account, as it has not been confirmed by the PayPal service.
What can I do if I receive a refund in PayPal that I do not expect
Whether we have received a refund that we did not expect in our PayPal account, or if the origin account sends a request for money on our behalf, it is advisable to go directly to the company's customer service.
We can choose different routes. The first is to use the application's chat . We can also use the telephone service, with hours of availability from Monday to Friday from 9:00 in the morning to 19:30 in the afternoon.
- 900 801 665 (toll free).
- 91 836 29 90 (national rate number).
Another option is based on going directly to the PayPal support page, which we can access through this link. The page in question will provide us with a code that we will have to write later on the telephone keyboard when the operator tells us to.
After contacting PayPal's customer service, the operator that attends our complaint will request all the necessary data for a correct evaluation of the case. Screenshots, codes of each operation, messages and emails received etc. Most likely, the service will deliberate in our favor.