Is this a scam? Anyone had anything similar?

[Lilolily]

A friend of mine's Mum got a weird Whatsapp message a few weeks ago from an eastern European sounding male name saying "hi (friends name) we were talking, why are you ignoring me?" and referenced photos! neither knew him or had had any such interactions, so just blocked and thought no more about it.

This morning a very small amount has been paid into the Mum's paypal account from a Chinese sounding name with the message "hey (friends name) can we speak"

All very bizarre. My friend does sometimes use her mums email but not her phone number/paypal.

Any ideas anyone?

How was the money paid? via friends and family? Flag it with PayPal immediately

Of course it's a scam!

Flag it with PayPal and get your mum to change all her passwords.

Her mum, sorry!

Don't think the 2 messages are connected?

Her details have probably been shared. Ignore and block the numbers. Flag the payment to Paypal. They are looking for active accounts and numbers to scam.

Definitely scammy. Worth pointing out as well that aggregation of stolen data is a big part of the fraud “business” there are people specifically “employed” just to piece together small amounts of stolen data. So if in one data breach your email and address get taken and then in another your email and phone number a programmer somewhere will be adding it all to their database. The fact you haven’t used a phone number for a specific company means nothing as chances are fraudsters will have got it through aggregation.

Thanks all, will advise!