Suspicious/scam purchases

[acadianfiddler]

Hey, so I've had two separate purchases in as many days get reversed as "Unauthorized purchases" through Paypal by e-mail accounts that are almost 100% certain to be fake throwaway e-mails. They are attempting to charge me $979.87 and $711.00 when they only paid $3 for the products. I'm expecting these will likely get thrown out as a result and I've already submitted counter-claims with a wealth of evidence to back my side up.

However, I have three more purchases after this point that appear to be highly suspicious as well (all from mail.ru accounts, but using English names and spam-like e-mail links that are all very similar to each other). I am highly expecting these to be a continuation of the same scam through a different service (the first two were through a Chinese throwaway e-mail company instead).

What I'm wondering is if there is potentially some way to prevent the likely scam filings from these accounts, whether through refunding their $3 payments that were sent, or through some other means, before they file their scam complaints? Any assistance would be appreciated.

[E-junkie_Guru]

I don't quite follow how these scammers were able to attempt making you pay them $979.87 and $711.00 when they paid you $3.00? Were those separate transactions listed in your PayPal account after their initial $3.00 payment, just using the same PayPal email each time?

We would definitely recommend disputing those $979.87 and $711.00 transactions with PayPal (not just the $3.00 ones) if you haven't already. As for why those may have used the same PayPal email as an initial $3.00 purchase from you, perhaps the initial purchase was just an attempt to discover your own PayPal Email where you receive the payment, so then they could try to exploit some aspect of PayPal's system to "bill" your PayPal account for the other fraudulent amounts?

The fact your Transaction Log shows no download attempts were made for those purchases (nor for those more recent mail.ru purchases you mentioned) may corroborate those orders were placed for ulterior reasons. Perhaps those buyers have not attempted to defraud you because PayPal has already fixed whatever exploit the earlier attempts took advantage of.

If you only became aware of those fraudulent payments via some email alert you received from PayPal, and you didn't see those amounts at all in your actual PayPal account, it's possible those emails didn't come from PayPal at all but, rather, were "phishing" emails meant to trick you into clicking a link in the email to bring up a knock-off duplicate of PayPal's site where you'd enter your PayPal login details for the crooks to capture.

Going forward, taking the free upgrade to a PayPal Business account will hide your PayPal Email from buyers and let you specify a business name to show them instead, as well as lifting your monthly receiving limit and letting PayPal's checkout site offer a card-based payment option for buyers without a PayPal account, among other business-minded amenities. You can take that free upgrade at https://www.paypal.com/UPGRADE

To go along with that, we'd also recommend changing your PayPal Email and Password, since the ones you've been using up to now may already be compromised. Once you do that, be sure to update the PayPal Email in your E-junkie Dashboard to match. That would be under Manage Seller Account > Edit Profile, where we'd also recommend making sure the Display Email we show your buyers does not match your new PayPal Email.

[acadianfiddler]

Hello there. Thank you for your timely reply.

I don't quite follow how these scammers were able to attempt making you pay them $979.87 and $711.00 when they paid you $3.00? Were those separate transactions listed in your PayPal account after their initial $3.00 payment, just using the same PayPal email each time?

No, these are in the same transaction. To give you one of the examples, here is a screenshot of the Resolution Page for one of them (with some information blanked out just in case, as this is a public post):

Perhaps those buyers have not attempted to defraud you because PayPal has already fixed whatever exploit the earlier attempts took advantage of.

It's possible, but the first two also took a while to file their own claims, so it may just be that they're waiting to do so, which is why I was hoping to nip it in the bud before it happened.

If you only became aware of those fraudulent payments via some email alert you received from PayPal, and you didn't see those amounts at all in your actual PayPal account, it's possible those emails didn't come from PayPal at all but, rather, were "phishing" emails meant to trick you into clicking a link in the email to bring up a knock-off duplicate of PayPal's site where you'd enter your PayPal login details for the crooks to capture.

Nah, these are straight out of the Paypal Resolution Center, not through e-mails. The first warning I got was the e-mail from Paypal mentioning the first filing had occurred, so rather than going through the e-mail's link, I immediately manually logged into Paypal. I did the same after the second filing. I definitely didn't fall for a phishing scam, thankfully.

Going forward, taking the free upgrade to a PayPal Business account will hide your PayPal Email from buyers and let you specify a business name to show them instead

I had actually wanted to do this beforehand, but unfortunately I lacked a credit card that worked for Paypal to do this with (the bank I use uses the Interac system instead, so I wasn't able to register my credit-enabled debit card with them). 'll maybe have to look into doing this in future, but I appreciate the suggestion.

Thank you for the reply, and I hope this further information will help clarify the situation, and potentially show you how the scam is working.

[exceltemplate]

Hello, I have had the same problem with and item that costs £2 and amount disputing is £700+. Contact PayPal and they say they would one refund the £2 BUT will charge you the bank charge back amount of £15!per transaction. This is absolutely mad that for a small transaction going to be changed £15 through no fault of my own. Taken products off marketplace now. It advisable if you have any resent transaction to issue a refund now because they raise the claim and issue the charge back. PayPal Also said that I am going to loose the case anyways as there no seller protection.

[E-junkie_Monster]

We've had some more reports about this sort of activity in the past few days, where small purchases are being contested for outlandish amounts of money in chargebacks. It is likely that some scammers have found a way to exploit PayPal's dispute system.

We do not process any of the transactions or refunds on our side, so we cannot take any action from here. The safe processing of online payments is PayPal's entire job and we'll have to rely on them to take care of this problem.

Any records PayPal might need about your original orders are available in your E-junkie transaction logs to help resolve these disputes.

So far it sounds like PayPal only reverses the original amount of the purchase in the end, but if they apply any other fees as a result of these scam chargebacks I'd recommend escalating the issue with PayPal since these scam purchases only occurred to exploit a flaw in their system.

[acadianfiddler]

Thank you for your recommendation. Would it be alright if I forwarded them this communication as well to show that your site agrees with this being a scam?

[E-junkie_Monster]

I would say it's extremely obvious that any $800+ chargeback on a $3.00 purchase is wrong. PayPal administered that original $3 transfer. They know that transaction didn't involve nearly a thousand dollars, and your screenshot from PayPal says it was only $3.

The fact that so many of these cases are coming up in a short amount of time does suggest that some people have found a way to push bad chargebacks into PayPal's system as a scam in hopes that at least a small percentage of them go through before the trend is noticed. If it is not a scam and these mystery buyers actually paid nearly a thousand dollars on a $3 transaction that's still on PayPal's shoulders for overcharging them.

PayPal shouldn't be holding you accountable for any of this and I would personally recommend pressing them to return any related fees beyond the original transaction amounts.

[acadianfiddler]

Thanks for all the help! It's a good thing I've kept this tab open for updates because that's a pretty big load of my mind. I just hope that Paypal decides to listen.

[acadianfiddler]

Alright, just to let you guys know, the Russian e-mail accounts are filing their own scams now, too. I just had one do so again, so I'll be disputing five claims in total. Maybe it would be a good idea to send out a warning to customers about it?

[E-junkie_Guru]

We're going to bring up the matter of these excessive chargebacks with our contacts at PayPal. We've heard from a couple other sellers affected by this, and it seems absurd that you'd be held liable to cover any chargeback fees for what appears to be a scam exploiting some bug at PayPal's end.

Please email the affected Transaction IDs to support@e-junkie.com, and it may also help if you could also attach any screenshot(s) showing the excessive chargeback amount and original payment amount together on the same image (e.g. as @acadianfiddler provided above).

[acadianfiddler]

Alright, I'll send off an e-mail about it and include the affected IDs. Two of them haven't tried their chargebacks yet, so I can only send three so far, but I'll send the IDs and screenshots of the amounts. Anything to help get this nipped in the bud.

[acadianfiddler]

So I just received an e-mail from "merchanttechsupport@paypal.com" that was CC'd to several individuals saying that someone from an e-junkie e-mail requested technical support from Paypal, and that new details should be added in the "Merchant Technical Support Portal"? I just want to make sure this is real, and if so, ask if there's anything I need to do with it?

[E-junkie_Guru]

Sorry for any concern. You won't need to do anything.

We opened a ticket with PayPal MTS (Merchant Technical Support) to bring the matter to their attention, Cc:ing you and other affected merchants who reported the issue, to keep you informed of that ticket and PayPal's response to it. We also notified our contact in PayPal Partner Management, who referred the matter to their Risk department.

[acadianfiddler]

Cool, just wanted to make sure I didn't need to add in another issue!

[E-junkie_Guru]

Just a followup to mention PayPal tells us they have taken action against the offending accounts but cannot divulge any further details, so we hope this has let you off the hook for any fees related to these fraudulent chargebacks.

[acadianfiddler]

The three chargeback issues are still present in my Paypal Resolution Center without any new updates so far, but it might just need some time for them to update it. Thank you for everything you guys have done to help!

Thankfully, the last two seem not to have bothered trying with their scam after the first ones got caught, so you guys really did us a huge favour! Definitely recommending you guys to anyone who needs an online store service!

[acadianfiddler]

Apparently I spoke too soon. One of the remaining two has finally gone ahead with their fraud attempt, so it seems we aren't done yet and Paypal hasn't fixed their vulnerability.

[E-junkie_Guru]

We also received your email with further details about that latest fraudulent chargeback, so we've added that to the case we opened with PayPal.

[acadianfiddler]

Unfortunately, it looks like Paypal is going to try to close the cases with $20 chargeback fees because "Transaction for Digital Goods are not protected" according to their e-mail. I've already been hit with one chargeback fee for $20. It's insane that they actually make you pay fees for obvious scams, especially ones they've spent weeks dealing with with no response, but I guess I'm out $80-$100 in automatic fees over this scam. While you guys at E-Junkie have been great, and I'm definitely going to recommend you guys to anyone that needs your service, I'm definitely warning people away from Paypal at this point. Their conflict support has been trash.

[E-junkie_Guru]

Oh dear, how troubling. We will bring this up with our contacts at PayPal and have replied to your email to request further details that should help us try to sort this out for you.