Very good PayPal scam. Please read so you don't get caught out. I almost gave away £750...

[Hungrycaterpillarsmummy]

Was almost scammed to the tune of £750. This is a good one and I was sooooo close to falling for it. Was on the phone to the scammers! Woke up to an email from PayPal saying there's been what looked like fraudulent activity on my account. I checked the email address by clicking on it and it did look legit. I then decided I'd go to PayPal from Google rather than clicking any links in the email. Logged in and saw a pending transaction for £750. Not one I recognised and definitely wasn't me. So I clicked on the transaction and there is a note saying "this is fraudulent activity" and call this number. So I call the number, go through security, get sent a security code, I am then transferred to someone senior, they tell me my bank card number, confirm all my name and address etc. Then they ask for the 3 digits on the back of my card. I pause, with alarm bells ringing. This is the absolute crème de la crème of information you can give someone because once they have that they can make purchases. I said no, this sounds like a scam. Then all of a sudden the guy is like "well you called us with the number from PayPal. You've called us because you got an email saying fraudulent activity detected and you can see on your account there has been". Whilst I was on the phone I decided to check my PayPal account and I had been logged out and couldn't get back in. He told me that was an added security measure. Anyway, I said no it's a scam and he ended with "ok then you will lose all your money". I said ok and hung up. Changed my password immediately, found the £750 transaction and this is where I had gone wrong. The phone number to call "PayPal" was on a NOTE on the transaction but this note is from the scammers! So they put their number in there and then act as PayPal. Honestly I was sooo close to saying those three digits but that's the only thing that hasn't allowed this scam to be successful. All I had to do was click "cancel" against the money request!

Do read the thread. That is the scammer's email

Those images didn't show my email! That is the scammers email!

I'm quite glad that a) my Mum's too deaf now to hear scammers conversation on the phone and b) doesn't have debit cards anyway as I have POA. It breaks my heart when I hear of old people who have given away large chunks of money to scammers.

I had this too. Two for £877 to a genuine company name, but the requestor was a random woman's name each time.

I just cancelled each one, didn't take note of numbers etc.

Isn't it usually 'If this wasn't you then you DON'T need to do anything?'

Thank you for posting OP - I would have done the same as you. Scary stuff

Ok thanks for the heads up!

I think you should get a new bank card as am sure u can buy things in shops/restaurants with cardholder not present and it’s just the 16 digits (could be wrong)

Also the email address you use, change the password for it…. this could be a way of further hacking you…. paypal part being the opener.

forward the email you got to:

[email protected]

I don’t think they were being nasty. It isn’t a clever or sophisticated scam - but that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t fall for it in a panic. It does show that if it were a “clever” scam or sophisticated one then the OP and many others probably would have fallen for it. Scammers are getting better - people need to be aware.

OP have you contacted action fraud as well as PayPal?

We once got a message from the Fraud Dept of Nationwide, to call this number about a suspected fraudulent transaction. I went onto the bank's website to find the Fraud Dept number, very similar to the one in the message, and when I called them it was legit but they were very pleased I'd used a different number. Never use a number from inside an email or message.

Thanks OP - this sort of thing needs to be highlighted regularly. I know someone who was scammed out of a few thousand recently and it wasn’t all that dissimilar to what you posted.

If scammers get you at the wrong moment when your guard drops it can be a nightmare so it helps to hear about situations like this as they might just get alarm bells ringing before it is too late (and to the patronising posters getting all sniffy that this wasn’t a very clever scam - what the hell motivated you to post like that?!!).

It's not

That article posted by @DeepThought42 has some useful points for you @Hungrycaterpillarsmummy

If you use any of the information you gave out in answer to their questions on other important sites where you login with the same email address, you will need to change those.

You should also check that the number you called hasn't resulted in large charges on your phone bill. Not sure what you can do if it has, but maybe your phone company might be able to help.

Thank you. I know, it's a bit perplexing for people to be so patronising about it. I'm just trying to help others know about it in the hopes someone else doesn't fall for it.

I said earlier I am usually very savvy with things like this but to see the transaction on my PayPal did make me panic. In hindsight it was a very easy thing to stop if I'd just clicked "cancel" but because I thought it was fraud I wanted to make sure my account was protected and called the damn number.
I'm actually really angry with myself for getting as far as I did.
I still realised it was a scam though, so there's a silver lining!

I had this same scam email a few weeks ago - for £549. Most convincing one I’ve ever seen and very nearly fell for it. Was just about to call the number when I stopped and decided to google it.

I then contacted PayPal directly and they asked me to forward the email to their phishing address. They contacted me later to confirm it was a scam and advised me to change all passwords.

Yes I thought about the phone charges
It was 0lan 0800 number so I'm off to check that now.
Im pretty sure I use my PayPal login password for other things but not the security questions info. I changed my PayPal password but do I need to change others? I don't think they could have known that obviously as they had to go through the password reset rigmarole 🤔

Thankfully no cost for the call

@Hungrycaterpillarsmummy Thanks for the heads up. How did you manage to change your password if you’d been locked out of PayPal?

I just clicked the password reset again and the got the txt code to use.
Maybe I did it quickly enough that they didn't manage to change the email or phone number that the verification stuff would get sent to.

Yes change everything to a unique password for future safety rather than necessarily for this one, use a passport manager so you can have unique ones for every site and don't have to remember them, bitwarden, lastpass etc are popular ones.

This.

I've had this attempted scam this morning too. An email from '[email protected]' about 'Fraudulent Activity Found In Your Account' saying money had been debited. Then when logging into PayPal I had a payment request for £749.99. I forwarded the email to [email protected] and cancelled the payment request transaction on my PayPal account.