Im sorry that this happened to you.

That's unfortunate. Hopefully you can get the transactions reversed.

my initial contact with PayPal was an automated rejection, yay for algorithms managing everything right? A.I. can only make that better profits for large companies in the future.

I lodged a request to speak with a real person who actually was of help, a nice young man form Nebraska called me this morning

I have hopes of a getting my money back.

Luckily I am in no money trouble, this was drained out of the money I keep for buying things online like art or things on eBay.

That's awful; good luck with the recovery. Have you tried setting up 2 factor authorisation with Authy?

2fa added, changed passwords on everything and trying to sort out this mess. I'm stopping using a few services as well to try to simplify my finances. best guess is about 2 weeks to sort this all out.

mostly sorted out now. There was a problem where some legitimate payments were messed up as well. I think it's all sorted out now. If artists money is still mixed up please let me know