Consumer complaint received 2022-03-04
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: CT
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Domestic (US) money transfer
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
On or close to XX/XX/XXXX, a PayPal employee, accessed my personal information, and used it to open accounts at several banks, and crypto currency exchanges, including, XXXX XXXX Bank, XXXX Bank, XXXX Bank, XXXX Bank, XXXX Bank, XXXX, XXXX, and many others. 

On XX/XX/XXXX, sometime in the early morning, the same PayPal employee, or group of employees, accessed my PayPal account, linked the XXXX XXXXXXXX account that they had opened in my name, and transferred {$28000.00} to the XXXX  XXXX account. They also changed the email address in my account to which transaction notifications would be sent, so I would not receive notifications of the new linked bank, and the money transfers they made. 

They even went so far as to begin text messaging my transaction notifications, from an XXXX area code, so I would not be aware that my transaction notifications had been redirected to a different email address. Except of course they omitted the transactions that they made in my account, including linking the new bank and the {$28000.00} transfer to XXXX XXXX. 

Over the next couple of days, they continued to send text messages of all of my actual transactions, verbatim as they appeared in my PayPal transaction history, even after PayPal had flagged unusual activity in my account and restricted access. 

Obviously, nobody outside of PayPal would have had that level of continued access to my account. 

FYI - I have turned over all of the text messages and other evidence to the Police. 

Fortunately, on XX/XX/XXXX XXXX shortly after the {$28000.00} was transferred out of my account, I happened to be in the account looking for some payments I was expecting, and immediately noticed the {$28000.00} transfer to a XXXX  XXXX account. I've never even had any account at XXXX XXXX Bank. I immediately went into the PayPal fraud reporting page and reported the activity. 

A few minutes later, I received a text message from the same XXXX area code as follows : " Msg from paypal XXXX we reviewed Your Dispute And we issued your refund it takes XXXX business days for refund to appear in your PayPal account. Refunded amount : 28000.00 USD '' The message looks pretty suspicious, not worded very well, and obviously did not come from PayPal, but who outside of PayPal would have known the moment I had submitted a dispute of that {$28000.00} transfer. ( I turned over this text message to the police as well ) As PayPal stated, later on XX/XX/XXXX, after having conducted an " investigation '', they had determined that the {$28000.00} transfer was " not unauthorized '', and emailed their findings to me, but I didn't receive that email. 

I was told by one of the PayPal fraud representatives, that PayPal would never admit that the transfer was " unauthorized '' no matter what, because then PayPal would have to restore the funds to my account out of their own money, and they were never going to do that! She even warned me that I should not have kept a balance in my PayPal account, because PayPal does not have the same security as a real bank. 

Now who would have had access to my PayPal account, so they knew of every transaction that I made, at the moment I made it. Even exactly when I filed the dispute. So they could send me decoy text messages, redirect the actual PayPal messages, and steal money out of my account without me knowing. 

It was a really elaborate plan, that only could have been an inside job. 

But it didn't work. On XX/XX/XXXX, immediately after I noticed the new XXXX XXXXXXXX account linked to my PayPal account, I contacted XXXX XXXXXXXX fraud protection dept and they confirmed that an account had been opened in my name, with all of my personal information, including information that I only had used for PayPal security questions. 

The personal information that was used to open the XXXX XXXX account and the XXXX Bank account, and likely the others as well, was only known to PayPal!!! 

XXXX XXXX bank acted quickly restricting the account, and recalling a bunch of pending transfers to other places, and requested instructions to send the funds back to PayPal.

PayPal, knowing that the entire scheme, was an inside job, perpetrated by one or more of their employees, simply ignored repeated efforts by XXXX XXXX to return the money to my PayPal account. 

On XX/XX/XXXX XXXX XXXX provided notice that the money had been returned to my PayPal account via an ACH reversal of the original transfer, and provided a trace number for the transaction, yet 3 weeks later PayPal still tells me that they can't find the funds!!!! 

The banking public should be astonished by the fact that this all happened on XX/XX/XXXX, and we caught it moments after it happened. The money has been tied up between global banks, that are household names, and almost 3 months later I still haven't gotten the money back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief