Consumer complaint received 2023-04-28
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: FL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
Beginning shortly after XXXX my account with XXXX, which is the account through which Im paid by my employer, XXXX XXXX, was hacked. Apparently, though I did not know it at the time, XXXX uses XXXX to transfer money into bank accounts. XXXX was hacked very badly in XXXX and billions of passwords and login information were stolen. My husband was hit pretty hard by people trying to use his XXXX XXXX card number for amounts like XXXX  at a clip and from places all over the world. XXXX XXXX took care of all of this, and my XXXX  was not out any money. I have now had XXXX stolen from me through this XXXX hacking from my XXXX account where I am paid earned income by my employer. They hacked into my email and read every word from XXXX until I dropped out of XXXX on XXXX XX/XX/2023. The hackers created and sent us fake XXXX emails that were fashioned after the usual ones we would receive each time there was any activity in our account. We even noticed other phishing emails during the turn of the year ( XXXX ), during the same time that they were siphoning money from my XXXX account. 

Due to the holidays and family illnesses, we did not catch on to this until around XXXX. I made phone calls to XXXX, but it has been pretty much a useless waste of time since whoever Im speaking to appears to be in another country and doesnt know much of anything about any questions that I ask. I appealed to one of my bosses in XXXX XXXX, XXXX XXXX, who oversees accounts at XXXX. He has been very helpful, and he has reached out to XXXX repeatedly. I am including some of these emails between the two of us in the supporting documentation. Please excuse any redundancy which is the nature of email streams. 

XXXX XXXX has a phone number for XXXX where he doesnt have to wait for an hour and a half ( as I have ) before he can talk to someone, since he is XXXX client. XXXX  business, XXXX XXXX is a very large company. However, even when he put in phone calls, he would still have to wait for a return call. We have been working on this together since XX/XX/XXXX. We have gotten very little information or help from XXXX. It seems that they are just stalling and making things complicated. 

Finally, in XXXX of this year they informed him that I should go on their website and register a complaint there. I did this and all that was available was an online chat where I chatted online with a person, or a robot named XXXX on XX/XX/2023. He/she told me that I would have to go to the local police and have them fill out a form whereby the officers name badge, number, location, etc. would be sent to an email address at PayPal. 
That email address is : XXXX I had already filed a police report earlier, on XX/XX/2023, and an officer came out and took information from me, made a report, and was to turn it over to the detective division, but nobody ever followed up on that. When I called the supervisor of the officer who came to my house to investigate this theft, he said there was absolutely nothing that the local police could do. He said that I must take it to a XXXX agency and suggested the Consumer Protection Bureau and also the XXXX. I am starting here with the Consumer Protection Bureau. XXXX and XXXX have been of no help and seem to just be in a delaying mode. I also contacted the XXXX  Department at XXXX since this is elder abuse. They told me the same thing that the local police told me. 

I did inquire as to whether XXXX had any insurance to cover such situations as did XXXX XXXX who covered my husbands hacking incidents -those couldve been a huge loss, had XXXX XXXX not taken care of it. I was told by someone I was speaking to on the phone at XXXX that they had no insurance whatsoever for such cases as this and that I could only regain these lost funds if they were found by their fraud division and returned to me. Their Fraud Division had done nothing as far as I know. 

To my knowledge, they have not instigated any sort of fraud investigation, although they claimed that they had. They said that they closed the investigation after sending me an email asking for more information and that since they did not receive a response, they closed the investigation. I never received any such email and in fact, we called in our XXXX consultants to ensure we didnt somehow miss these very important emails. Our XXXX Consultants did a special search to track down any pertinent emails from the last XXXX days. They found nothing of any significance and certainly nothing about a fraud investigation being undertaken, nor about them dropping the investigation due to not hearing back from me. There were no emails directed to us at our email address. 

Subsequently I was able, through XXXX XXXX at XXXX XXXX XXXX to get some emails that we never received, but that were sent directly to him, not to me. Neither these, nor the emails our XXXX consultant retrieved, had any information concerning a XXXX investigation. There is no evidence that XXXX has acknowledged that fraud has occurred to me until the XXXX of XXXX when I did the online chat. Their only response was to acknowledge the chat and say theyd get back to me, and as of now, Ive heard nothing. All of this you will be able to see in the attached corroborating information. Also, within the emails that are attached, relating primarily to correspondence between me and XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX, XXXX, you will find the police report I filed with the local police office here. 

Hyperwallet is apparently part of PayPal. I would have thought a company as big as Paypal that big would have insurance to cover such an event. But the person I spoke to on the phone when I called XXXX insisted they had no insurance whatsoever. 

Also included in the supporting documents is 1. ) An example of a XXXX XXXX XXXX  response regarding payments and one of the phishing ones sent by the hackers. 
2. ) A breakdown of the payments that went into bank accounts other than my own and the actual statements from Paylution that show the last XXXX  digits of the XXXX bank accounts XXXX deposited money into that should have gone to my bank. 
3. ) When XXXX noticed that there were other bank accounts the money was going into, they assumed I was breaking their rules. Apparently, it didnt occur to them that I was being hacked. They then froze my account, so that I couldnt have access to my account to get the necessary information regarding the deposits made to other banks. I had to jump through hoops with them to prove my identity so I could get back into my account to retrieve the necessary information. 
So here we are, more than three months after I began trying to get a fraud investigation underway, and nothing has happened as far as Ive been informed. 
4. ) I also went to my banker, XXXX XXXX, at XXXX, who called the actual bank ( a XXXX XXXX in another country ) that my {XXXX went into illegally on XX/XX/2023. The bank he called was very willing to help and felt bad about this, but they could do nothing without having the full bank account numbers and all I had was the last four digits. 
5. ) Honestly, XXXX has made me feel more like the criminal than the victim.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation