Consumer complaint received 2020-09-11
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: AZ
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
In XX/XX/XXXX I had signed up for a Venmo account in order to send/transfer funds/ money to my daughter in the amount of {$62.00} utilizing Venmo 's mobile phone app. I had assigned/attached my personal checking account for the payment/transfer method. This transfer and receipt of the funds/money by my daughter was successful. Since this time I have not had any further use of the Venmo app. 

On XX/XX/XXXX I received an email from VenmXXXX indicating I was paid {$150.00} from an unknown individual. I basically ignored the email and did not check my Venmo account to verify the receipt of this money. On the same day I received another email from Venmo indicating a random individual has made a friend request. I did not know this individual and did not accept this friend request. Again, I ignored this email. Then on  XX/XX/XXXX I received email 's indicating two unknown individuals had sent money to my account. I kept receiving email 's and money being sent by random people on various dates in XXXX. I brought this situation to the attention of my son and daughter since they utilize Venmo more often. They were both baffled why random people were sending money to my account. I do not know the specific date I Googled to research for information regarding people using the Venmo app to send money to random people which led me to read information of method 's being used as a scam of sending money using Venmo and the method being used to obtain money illegally when the money is being reversed or refunded. The information indicated it is a fraudulent scam. I then reached out to Venmo through their app to chat with a representative regarding this matter. I asked if my account had been compromised? the representative stated my account was not. I also asked if the money being sent to me is part of a scam going on with people using the Venmo app in an illegal manner? The representative basically stated these random people sending money to my account is an apparent mistake or typo sending to my Venmo account name. The representative indicated I can go into my Venmo and reverse/return the funds to the sender 's. I told the representative I did not  want to do the refund/reversal in case it is part of this fraudulent scheme/scam that I had reviewed online. The representative stated it is not part of a scam and she would do the reversal/refund on her end which was completed. I still continued to receive money and reached out to a Venmo representative through chat regarding the same issue, the representative proceeded to do the reversal 's also indicating the money is being sent to me by mistake. Now again several more times in XXXX I received money again from random individuals and had another representative complete the reversal/refunds. The total amount of funds received has been calculated to be {$820.00} coming from approximately 12 random individuals.

It appears the Venmo app does not have any type of feature such as a pop-up for people to review the information to make sure people are sending funds to the proper person before completing the fund/money transfer. I have not done a test myself to see if this is a feature but there needs to be some method to prevent this continual sending money by mistake or typo errors. Typing my Venmo user name does not appear to be easy that an typographical error could occur.

All Venmo chat transcripts have been emailed to me and have been retained.

Company response to consumer: Closed with explanation