I may have been scammed by Paypal
10 months ago
Maybe I need help with this!
Hello, folks! This is very difficult for me to say, whether it's because of my own stupidity, screwing up or karma playing against me, but I have possibly been scammed from Paypal, and explaining it to my ultra conservative family would be complicated since they would get upset with me for a minimal thing somewhat harmless even for this kind of situations, but well I tell them (maybe not to force them to give me money, but) maybe so that they don't make the same mistake as me or take care of people who want to take advantage of you on the Internet when they ask you for commissions and want to make you pay more, but something that I have noticed is that they have already applied one and almost another to me recently, I was on the discord when someone spoke to me by message for the first time, to first praise good things about my art (by God), and then ask me if I would make a drawing with a reference that would not suit me much (either the belly roar also blinded me in that), there was no problem with that, but at the same time there was another account of that person with the similar name and messages me to tell me if it is another account of his and I confirm, when he says "turn a blind eye," I better try to ignore that one and talk to him about his "main account," and when he told me to pay him I did it, but something bad happens (from there everything starts to go to hell), something that they don't tell you directly about Paypal (and more so if you investigate it) is that you shouldn't pay a user who asks you for money to give you more "credited" money, so you would pay more than you would receive, which could be a scam or not, either for I have investigated that some may be, and others may not (because of the stupid security of Paypal), but in this case they ask me for a huge payment for the amount to unlock my personal account to receive huge amounts, it is somewhat ambiguous but what do you say?
But the bad thing is that I told him to send money when it didn't go through my movements, he told me that it was better to pay him through his bank accounts to unblock me from my personal account to a business one, and instead of telling him that it would be better if he sent me his Paypal email so I could send him the invoice, he insisted that it would be better if I paid him, and since there that when I screwed up by paying him an amount of money already paid, now I am asked by "spam" mail from Paypal to pay him like $500 USD, in order to receive $950 USD credit to my account (there I already deduced that something was wrong), which is impossible for me, even to ask for it in a loan at any bank in my region, and now I have no money and I owe some small debts that are somewhat overdue, and now that I have explained to him about the situation of obtaining that impossible amount in a week and that it is better to reimburse me what I paid him from his bank accounts, the guy became very hysterical and stubborn with me that he even tried to manipulate me with "trust" (a few times) and now he threatens to call the police on me with that (and mind you this is not the first time he does it).
Then I realized that there was another user (before the other simultaneous on arrived) who may not be worth saying his name but would come with the same tactic, I had my doubts if I would accept his request, until a few weeks later I would accept it, and from there I told him that I would send him an invoice for payment, but he insisted, asking me for my email to pay me, but then I told him to ask for his Paypal email and he remained silent at the end and until now, it's better that didn't succeed, and I stopped talking to him because of that.
Here I will send some screenshots so that you can see the emails that have come to me as "spam," and know what kind of people take advantage of this.
Keeping quiet won't fix things, especially if I deal with my somewhat conflictive family, but something I have understood is that here they understand, either from my Latin American sense that sometimes is not trustworthy with people you meet at first and uses those malicious tactics, or by using a payment platform like PayPal, although I realized it too late, that was also my mistake.
- Tell me if that is not right at all, and give me your support (maybe not force you monetarily). 😥
FA+

Maybe switch to Kofi for now to get away from Paypal while you work with them to resolve this. I am sorry that you were taken advantage of and I hope you can get refunded and made whole again.
For future reference, don't forget the next steps:
- Please make sure you never give your Paypal Email and only send invoices asking for the exact amount for the commission. (This is how they send you a fake email from "Paypal" that appears in your spam)
- When you do get emails, make sure that whoever send it, matches with a professional account. Usually scammers will send an email from paypal[at]gmail.com when it should be something like business[at]paypal.com
It happens. I'm sorry to hear you were a victim of this. Talk to your bank to see if there is anything you can do. Otherwise, Best of luck.