Consumer complaint received 2025-07-02 00:00:00
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service — Mobile or digital wallet
Issue: Fraud or scam — 
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: UT

Complaint narrative:
Venmo wasn't allowing my XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX  transfer, there was an error that said to try again later. I tried to get resolution via the Venmo app to no avail. I could not even get their customer support number through the app. I was forced to look it up online. That's where everything took a turn south. The first link in the XXXX search turned out to be a fraud site. When I called that number the scammers that answered were very convincing. They told me that my account had been locked, and I could not access my XXXX. They had me download an tracking app to watch what I was doing under the guise of helping me to secure my phone that they claimed was infected with malware and that they were receiving login attempts from various locations. I followed the instructions the scammers gave me and converted my crypto back to dollars and made a contact card to their specification, then they had me text numbers to the contact card. The numbers was the money in my Venmo account and went out as XXXX XXXX transactions. XXXX transaction for {$990.00} and another for {$900.00}. I was told this would allow me to recover my money from the " locked '' account. Then the scammers tried to get me to open my other crypto platforms like XXXX and XXXX. When I got suspicious the abruptly claimed I would receive my funds in XXXX and hung up. 
That's when I did another search to verify the number I called and found the real Venmo XXXX number XXXX to XXXX lines down from the top of the page. I called them to report the fraud that had occurred l recited the whole event and the next day when I got the email from XXXX XXXX I sent in screen shots of all the transactions, the contact card the scammers had me make with the phone number that my money was transferred to, and anything else I found like the web address for the scammers. They refunded my money as a " temporary credit '' and it seamed they would be able to take care of the situation, I mistakenly assumed that they were going to help me. After a week of calling and receiving emails that said things like " Need more information '' and status updates that I had no idea what they mean because I could not get information back from the people making the decisions about the investigation. My emails were ignored, and my phone calls to customer care resulted in me being told I had to talk to the investigators through email. Different names would be on the emails, no XXXX names were the same. It looked like a cluster f. Then the week ended and the decision was made by Venmo XXXX hold me accountable for the money that was stolen from me. They placed my account into a suspended status and made it negative almost XXXX XXXX dollars. My money is gone, I was the victim, they took no accountability for their app not functioning and for the absence of any means of real communication to the company from the app with the exception of a chat bot that was useless. The could not track down my money or reverse it and they stopped trying to pursue the assailants, to the best of my knowledge.

Company response to consumer: Closed with monetary relief