Paypal high quality "invoice" scam alert

[cashnocredit]

Well, I just got one of the better scam emails. An email direct from Paypal for an invoice I never authorized. And yet, it had my actual name and the originating address was paypal.com

 

Don't be fooled. Like the guy in this article, I called the number on the email after first logging in and verifying the phony invoice was pending. It became obvious the guy I was talking to was feeding a line of crap designed to scare me while he had little info other than the ph. no. I used to call him. Hung up.

 

So, a little searching and guess what. Found this:

 

This PayPal invoice scam almost got me. Here's how to spot it - Elliott Report

 

Pretty much an exact match! Annoying pieces of excrement.

 

 

[Burgerwars]

It's happened to me too. I've lost track of how many scams I've seen pop-up in my email. I end up not believing anything I read anymore (except on Creditboards). 

[hdporter]

A couple of us have been "hit" with this recently.

 

The truth is that anyone can invoice you through PayPal.  It's only necessary that the scammer has an email and they can try it out with PayPal, hoping that you actually have a PayPal account and an invoice can be generated.

 

However, PayPal doesn't "collect" on the invoice.  It's actually safe to ignore.  The problem crops up when someone calls the scammer to complain, and in the process, reveals sufficient info that enables the scammer access to your PayPal account.

[cashnocredit]

37 minutes ago, hdporter said:

A couple of us have been "hit" with this recently.

 

The truth is that anyone can invoice you through PayPal.  It's only necessary that the scammer has an email and they can try it out with PayPal, hoping that you actually have a PayPal account and an invoice can be generated.

 

However, PayPal doesn't "collect" on the invoice.  It's actually safe to ignore.  The problem crops up when someone calls the scammer to complain, and in the process, reveals sufficient info that enables the scammer access to your PayPal account.

Exactly so. I should have mentioned that. Seems there are two aspects to the scam. Somebusiness just pay invoives w/o much checking.

 

in my case it was clearthey were also fishing. Claiming my computer was hacked and offering to help. No doubt they would go on to ask for access and probably plant malware. Didn't bite and just hung up. The "Paypal" rep that answered the phone was not Paypal.  Be careful. Especially watch out for anyone trying to scare you into doing something quickly that involves you giving them any personal info, passwords, remote access, etc.  Big red flag it's a scam..

[MP80]

I see PayPal scams every week and I just delete them. The good news is I know I don't have a PayPal account so I can be sure this is a scam.

 

Every week I get a different scam in my email, mainly a Gmail Geek Squad scam from various entity, and every time I see it, I delete it.

 

You hover over the sender's address, and it's clear this isn't a legitimate sender you know, and you see letters that don't make sense.

 

Occasionally I get an email from Microsoft telling me that someone in Russia has logged into my Microsoft account, which looks legitimate, but I'm not going to be fooled.

[shifter]

PayPal is awful. They just don't care about scams and fraud. They clearly have a backdoor in their system and don't do anything to fix it. I added my Citi DC to PP and 2 days later, it was compromised and a bunch of fraudulent charges showed up. I got a new card and added it back into PP a few months later and 2 days later, more fraudulent charges. I've stopped adding cards into PP now. 

 

And these fake invoices are sent by the millions and they don't do anything to try to shut down the accounts or prevent this type of abuse. They just put it back on the user and say, meh, don't pay the invoice if you don't recognize it. They are the worst.