Whoever this is had attempted to put this charge through on all my cards about a month ago. I got a ton of notifications in my email from "paypal" all referring to an attempt to charge this money to all my cards, including my debit card. I found evidence of of the attempt on three cards. But I couldn't find the charge anywhere in Paypal account so I figured the emails themselves were fraudulent too.
Fortunately most of them were locked and one of them I'd already replaced because of a previous unauthorized charge and hadn't added the new card anywhere yet. And the charge didn't show up on my debit card either, so I assumed the bank had blocked them from even getting in.
They tried this the other day with my Discover Card (which I hadn't replaced because they didn't try that one last time) who declined it because the card was locked and let me know about it. I reported the card and have a new one on the way.
Last night, my husband ran to the store to grab something for me and I unlocked my debit card so he could use it.
I forgot to lock it and now this charge for 748.99 is pending in my checking account. I can't dispute it with either PayPal or my Bank until it clears. To be direct, this is stupid, because AmEx had no trouble at all with filing a dispute the previous fraudulent attempt (different thief) while it was still pending.
Because this is part of a much larger problem (within the last month someone's attempted to hack my email, Amazon account, and most recently my Google account), my son who works in cyber security had me scan my computer and I found a remote access trojan on it which is probably the source of all the problems.
I am just sick about this. And reading about it, I find that this is not the first time they've run this scam, they are out of China, and PayPal has a terrible track record for siding with the "merchant." We are not rich people and that is close to half my husband's paycheck this week (short check due bad weather). I've gotten a high interest personal loan which we really can't afford to cover it until this is sorted out.
So my question is--has anyone else had any success with fighting PayPal on this? Or am I going to have to go to my attorney general? Or get a lawyer? It OBVIOUS that this is fake. If I could, I would post a screen shot.
