I received and invoice from Direct Relief for $35 to help those affected by California wildfires.

[SF_RodT]

Hello Community,
I received an invoice from Direct Relief for $35 to "help those affected by wildfires". I did not order anything from anyone in the US. I live outside the US. It is marked as pending, and I have no intention of paying it willingly. Is this fraud? A scam? I tried to open a dispute and was not able to. What is this? Am I obligated to pay it? Thank you all for you help. Has anyone else received this invoice? I changed my password immediately.

[LMCMEN]

I have received 2 from an April Wilson

One for $50 that said it was for the World Health Organization and 

One for $99 for some kind of Apple product

I also received one for $35 that said the sender was the IRS, but when opened the invoice said it was for the World Health Organization.

I've canceled all, and attempted to report them to the resolution center, but received a message for each saying there was nothing they could do with those and to refer to my Terms and Agreement.

[silvamayflower]

URGENT!

Can anyone tell me how to report a fraudulent invoice.  I have received an invoice purporting to be from Support California wildfires relief, but with odd spacing which clearly makes in fraudulent, added to the fact that I have not promised to pay them any amount of dollars!  How do I report this?  Following the lead just brings me to more lists of FAQs, which is not helpful.

[Rmcraig]

I have the same issue. Called PayPal customer service and was less than impressed with their response. Seemed not to be concerned about their clients receiving these fraudulent invoices and told me “just to ignore it”.

[silvamayflower]

Thanks for reply anyway.  I think I will just ignore it.  But it would be good if they actually seemed to care.  After all, some people will be caught out just clicking through to find out what it is.  I reckon if I'd clicked on the link I'd have been in all sorts of trouble.

[Pistol4901]

I have it on mine as well. I did a search for the “agency” and it is a fundraiser through PayPal. There are a bunch you can chose from like RedCross to make donations to. I am waiting for a reply from PayPal. My guess is it is an accident and sent an invoice to everyone instead of a want to donate type thing or on purpose to see who would just pay it? But if you do to the fundraiser list- they’re on it. https://www.paypal.com/fundraiser/110389773428548283

[silvamayflower]

And so they may be!  But when you see it like this:  Su pport Ca lifornia Wildfires Relie f sent you an invoice (note the odd spacing), plus the heading 'DirectRelief' - which may also be a genuine thing - is not very clear and professional, so I think it's been copied from somewhere.  Plus my name's not on it, only my email address.  It smells more like a spoof than a mistake.

[Pistol4901]

I got ahold of PayPal with a slightly better answer than "ignore it." And it worked:

"I checked the transaction and it is an invoice that was sent by the sender. The invoice will not involve funds as long as you don't pay it. If you wish to cancel the invoice, kindly follow the steps on how.

1. Log in to your PayPal account.

2. Either find the request or invoice on your Summary page or click Activity.

3. Click Cancel next to it.

4. Click Yes to complete the cancellation."

Just a note- this did not work on my mobile phone but did when I logged in with my desktop.

[silvamayflower]

Thank you, I have now done this.  I have also written to DirectRelief to report the matter and see whether it was a mistake or an attempt at fraud.

[TucoBird]

I found this fix on another thread about the same thing, but it is good this gets out as much as possible as it is freaking many people out.  I logged in not by clicking on the link but opened a session and logged into Paypal and was surprised to see this was really in my account?  I did digging and this was apparently an issue as far back as 2018, but it looked like then the money would leave your account but you had X hours to get it back.  Paypal needs to stop this.  Also, yes there is a legitimate Paypal fundraiser for California Wildfires - exact same name but none of the weird spaces.  Paypal needs to protect its users better than this.  Even charities I donate to regularly (and often using Paypal) don't randomly send me invoices and this is not appreciated, even if it was legit but I am sure this was  not.

I also saw a similar issue on an online thread not related to a charity invoice but fake GoDaddy invoices so I guess anyone who hacks a list of email addresses can do this.  I did get an notice that some account I had set up on "LiveAuctions" had been hacked and my info was on the dark web, but I don't reuse passwords and reset my password.  So I guess since the old password does them no good they are now trying to get money from the stolen list of email addresses.

[ocp]

Got 2 of these myself. **bleep** scammers.