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.

[quietgirl]

Me too. 

After cancelling the invoice,  forward it and the original notifications to spoof@paypal.com for investigation. 

Hopefully Paypal can shut down the fraudulent accounts. 

I also got the default auto response that had nothing to do with the issue I submitted.  Talked with the customer service rep via messaging and was informed someone does review every email so it will be investigated.

[Olatz]

Same problem here, the WORST thing is that PayPal is not going to do anything, not even provide de contact details or to raise a claim against. Apparently my email was taken from a somewhere and anybody can do this, take your email account and send you a fake invoice.

While you check any transaction in PayPal you get all the details from the counterpart and here just a fake name, with a fake logo and with a text with many misspelling.

I wonder how many people are trying to scam this way and how many will cancel their PayPal account from now on... 

[spokehead71]

Saturday morning I received the same invoices as others in this forum and cancelled the invoice. Thinking that that this might be the first signal that some stole my identity I immediately changed my PayPal password and cancelled the underlying credit card.  Today (Monday) I contacted the organization (Calfund.org) identified on the invoice to see what was going on. They said that they became aware of the invoices on 8/24 and notified PayPay that they were bogus. Further, they said PayPal committed to investigating and resolving the issue for customers (and Calfund) ASAP.  I tried contacting PayPal via their “help” feature. (It is worthless.) I then tried to contact them phone. After going through their tiered system for callers I was told that no one was available to help me … and got an immediate hang-up. So much for “Your call is valuable to us” … etc.  Will be staying away from PayPal until they get their act together.

[quietgirl]

Anyone else getting $35 invoices for donations to allegedly support Direct Relief // California Wildfires?

I got legit paypal notifications regarding two pending invoices on my account this AM.

• "Help those affected by the California Wildfires sent you an invoice for $35.00 USD"

Which is odd because I made no such donations.  

When I look under the Summary tab of my account, it appears payments would be going to one "Fraga <removed>" not to Direct Relief. The invoices themselves are full of random text about the wildfires. 

I immediately cancelled both invoices and forwarded them and the original notifications to spoof@paypal.com for investigation. Please do the same. 

[LisaS72]

How did you cancel it? I can't seem to find that option, and when I tried to raise it, Paypal said that I couldn't via their resolution centre.

[LisaS72]

I don't know why, but this time the Cancel button appeared. Very strange, but sorted.

[quietgirl]

Lisa -

I had to poke around a bit. It was either under the Summary or Activity tab.  There was option to Pay or Cancel.  I picked cancel and it struck the item off my list. 

[LisaS72]

Yeah, I don't know whether it is my crap internet, or Paypal, but there was no cancel button and I thought I was going mad. And suddenly, it was there. I am more worried about older people who might ignore the email, although I guess that we have to actually ok the payment to have it go through, so maybe it doesn't happen automatically.  Some might actually ok it, as Paypal is usually quite reliable, and they will think it is a proper payment.

I have sent my email off to the Spoof email address.

[LMCMEN]

I was unable to cancel them on my phone.  I had to login from a desktop for the cancel option to be accessible.

[jhang19]

Yep. Figured it was something fraudulent right away since there weird spaces in the subject line. But it took me a bit to see/find the cancel button. Scary stuff. Thanks for posting something in this page.