Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 71 posts

Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#1

Post by ano-ther »

From time to time I get emails from PayPal stating that someone sent me a small amount of money (always an odd number, between 5 and 21 Euro), and that I should register to claim this amount.

It is obviously a scam, because

- I don’t know the senders

- It’s to an email address I no longer use and that gets spammed frequently

- It’s from a PayPal affiliate in the country of the email domain (I no longer live there)

What is the game here? Is it to confirm my email address is real? Will they claim the money back? Or would I become a money laundering mule when they ask me to send the money back to a different account? I just can’t come up with anything that sounds remotely profitable to me.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#2

Post by reaperman »

Sometimes people send money to me accidentally over PayPal. I’ve had great difficulty getting PayPal to return the money, never succeeded. Always been afraid to send it back myself in case the original transfer ever gets clawed back. So I’ll just have an extra $200 sitting in my PayPal account that I can never touch.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#4

Post by rocketbop »

I assume they will claim a mistake transfer if you claim and ask you to send it back to another account.

It’s a small amount of probably fraudulent money, but small enough that you might just do it. And I guess the hope is enough people do to make it add up to some good recurring income.

Would love to hear if there’s more to it than that.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#6

Post by Wowfunhappy »

reaperman wrote: post #2

Sometimes people send money to me accidentally over PayPal. I’ve had great difficulty getting PayPal to return the money, never succeeded. Always been afraid to send it back myself in case the original transfer ever gets clawed back. So I’ll just have an extra $200 sitting in my PayPal account that I can never touch.

Surely, there should be some reasonable amount of time (maybe 2-3 years?) after which you can safely consider the money to be yours? Especially if you made a reasonable effort to return it.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#7

Post by wyldfire »

In the past this has happened to me because I have a "givenname.surname@gmail.com" email address and a relatively common name. The other people frequently misspell or forget their email address and end up with mine. I get occasional money sent via paypal but also all kinds of other email. I get a pretty clear indication of which companies don't bother with an email verification step.

At one time (may still be the case?) someone created a Facebook account with my email address and I was able to click on a link and be logged in as them.

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#8

Post by Aulig »

I've read that the scam is that they will ask you to send the money back. If you do, you'll be out of the money because the money they sent you will disappear after a while because Paypal pulls it back (probably because they sent it to you from a stolen credit card or something like that)

Re: Ask HN: What’s the deal with random people sending me money over PayPal?

#9

Post by orangepurple »

rocketbop wrote: post #4

I assume they will claim a mistake transfer if you claim and ask you to send it back to another account. It’s a small amount of probably fraudulent money, but small enough that you might just do it. And I guess the hope is enough people do to make it add up to some good recurring income. Would love to hear if there’s more to it than that.

I had the PayPal sender email and message me dozens of times begging me to return the money when it was sent in error. ($990)
Post reply on HN