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Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

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Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#21

Post by rlpb »

scarmig wrote: post #7

IANAL, but I don't think small claims court against PayPal would be end in a judgment against them. Though they might just cave and give you the money to avoid dealing with it.

It seems to me that PayPal's responsibility ended when they delivered the check to the correct recipient, and that's what they paid for with the $1.50 fee.

But that didn't happen, so it's PayPal who's been defrauded and separately from that they still owe the funds to the account holder.

But IANAL also. Being USPS there are probably special laws about it.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#22

Post by willcipriano »

paypal_woes wrote: post #4
willcipriano wrote: post #3

If you owed PayPal money they wouldn't accept that you wrote a check to them and someone else cashed it as sufficient payment.

I don't "accept" it either, but I also don't know what I can do about it, hence my question.

Small claims court.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#23

Post by n_ary »

Brushfire wrote: post #5

I'd suggest you file a claim in small business court. It will get resolved very quickly.

This is the best approach moving forward.

I also had a similar incident where I received a wrong shipment object from eBay and promptly returned it on same day. The seller issued a refund in a nonexistent PayPal account(I owned that e-mail too but PayPal never sent any notifications).

After 5 months of helpless back-n-forth trying to explain what happened(I didn't receive a refund yet), eBay simply decided that my account is fraudulent and I contact PayPal of whereabout of refund. Paypal told me, I can't be supported without sharing when and from which account the refund was issued and also blocked my PayPal account as suspicious behavior.

After 5 months of frustration, I decided to involve my lawyer and he just told me to write a new email to eBay and CC PayPal about whole incident and how if not action taken they'll expect a notice from my lawyer in 14 days.

Within 2hours of that e-mail, eBay sends me the most polite email with "heartfelt apologies" and shared the info about the refund details and PayPal suddenly offers me a nice email about how to claim the refund from nonexistent account. So suddenly my eBay and PayPal accounts are no longer blocked and a nice PayPal agent moves the refund to my account immediately and reassures me that they reported the incident "for investigation" so such inconvenience doesn't happen to anyone.

Sorry for the long rant, but these bigCo support are real cesspool of lazy support people who are too busy just copy lasting scripted responses and screwing insecure people. Sometimes you need to bring them to court.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#24

Post by [deleted] »

paypal_woes wrote: post #13
chillycurve wrote: post #9

Slightly off-topic: has PayPal become unusable in the browser for anyone else? When using Firefox, no VPN, no ad blocking, I get some nondescript error that bounces me from the login screen. My IP must be on some list, but it is really annoying.

I use Firefox on Linux with uBlock Origin, as well as Enhanced Tracking Protection. Unfortunately, it works fine in the browser -- if it didn't, I'd be $270 richer right now!

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#25

Post by PopAlongKid »

>Their broken website refuses to let me add a bank account for withdrawal,

It would be interesting to find out more about this. Somehow I thought you had to have some other account (checking, credit card) linked to your Paypal balance to even get started.

If you had it to do over, would you have tried some other way to get access to the money (such as transferring it to a friend's account, or using to to pay for something, etc)? This question is just a practical one; I agree that after paying $1.50 for an advertised service, your result should have been better.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#27

Post by pengaru »

paypal_woes wrote: post #10
pengaru wrote: post #6

> "pay to the order of " So it was pre-filled by PayPal as remitted to , and not you? And you have the image proof of this?

No, the payee on the front of the check is me. The endorsement field contains the following, handwritten: MOBILE DEPOSIT ONLY PAY TO THE ORDER OF

Well, if it's so clearly a case of check fraud and you have the images, at least report it to the police providing them the images, if you haven't already.

You really should have done that immediately upon hearing it was cashed, definitely upon receiving the check images. Time is not on your side AIUI, and it's already such a small sum.

Fucking paypal.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#28

Post by paypal_woes »

PopAlongKid wrote: post #25

>Their broken website refuses to let me add a bank account for withdrawal, It would be interesting to find out more about this. Somehow I thought you had to have some other account (checking, credit card) linked to your Paypal balance to even get started. If you had it to do over, would you have tried some other way to get access to the money (such as transferring it to a friend's account, or using to to pay for some…

I had only had credit cards linked to PayPal before, never a checking account. There is no option to transfer the balance to a credit card. When I tried adding a checking account it insisted I provide a mobile number, which I did, and it refused to accept, telling me to just "try a different number," lol. This is an actual cell phone number from a US carrier (Mint Mobile).

Yes, in retrospect I should have sent the money to a friend and asked for a Zelle payment in return.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#29

Post by paypal_woes »

warrenm wrote: post #26

How did you get a PayPal account in the first place without having a bank account attached? That was a requirement for years

It's never been a requirement AFAIK. I've had this PayPal account for 20 years and have never attached a bank account, only credit cards.

When I tried to attach a bank account, they wouldn't let me: they required a phone number to proceed, but refused to accept mine.

Also noteworthy for anyone else reading this, there are two ways to add a bank account: directly, by providing the routing and account numbers, and then confirming two small deposits, OR, the "easy way" where you log into your bank and allow API access.

If you choose the second option, read the fine print very carefully: they state that they will have access not only to transfer funds, but also e.g. see your full transaction history for the past 12 months.

Regardless, I tried both methods of adding the account, and they both failed with the same mobile phone number issue.

Re: Ask HN: A check from PayPal to me was stolen and cashed. What can I do?

#30

Post by paypal_woes »

pengaru wrote: post #27
paypal_woes wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the payee on the front of the check is me. The endorsement field contains the following, handwritten: MOBILE DEPOSIT ONLY PAY TO THE ORDER OF

Well, if it's so clearly a case of check fraud and you have the images, at least report it to the police providing them the images, if you haven't already. You really should have done that immediately upon hearing it was cashed, definitely upon receiving the check images. Time is not on your side AIUI, and it's already such a small sum. Fucking paypal.

My understanding is that the US Postal Inspection Service is the only police agency with jurisdiction over this. I did report it via their website immediately[1], which said that there would be a later opportunity to provide documentation if and when a criminal investigation were actually opened -- but that did not happen.

I will try to report it to the local police as well, I suppose. I will stop by later today.

[1] Immediately, meaning immediately upon learning of the fraud, which, thanks to PayPal's negligence and incompetence, was about 4 weeks after the fraud actually occurred.

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