Hi KAW,
Firstly, I am sorry to hear about what has happened here. There are a few things that I need to provide you with information on before anything else.
When a payment has been sent through the PayPal website, you only have 45 days from when the payment was sent in order to open a dispute on the transaction to try and get your money back. If the 45 day timeframe has passed, you can't open a dispute on the transaction through your account.
The next thing that I need to advise you is that Personal/Gift transactions are not covered under our Buyer Protection Policy. We would only advise that if you are purchasing goods or services that you select the correct options when making the payment through your account. This means that even if you were trying to open a dispute within 45 days from when the payment was sent, we would not be able to investigate it as it was sent as a Personal payment.
My best advice for you would be to contact your local police in order for them to investigate it further on your behalf. If your police require, they can contact PayPal directly in order to request any information that they need to assist them with their investigations.
There is not much that PayPal could do to investigate a dispute further on your behalf. If you wish, you could also try contacting your local trading standards office and citizen's advice bureau and they may be able to give you more information on what you could do to try and get your money back.
I hope this information helps,
David.
