Unauthorised PayPal Payment Through Old Hacked Account

AustraliaObscura on 31/05/2021 - 19:28

Today I received a text saying my ANZ savings account (which hasn't been used in 3 years and contained 27c) was overdrawn. I go to online banking, and there is a PayPal transaction from May 31 for $62.

After a few calls to ANZ (they blocked the transaction, it was still pending on their end but don't know if it will be fully reversed) and PayPal, I discovered an old PayPal account from 2013 had been used for this transaction. I lost access to the hotmail account years ago, which was linked to the PayPal account (tried to get back into the email account - Microsoft sent me a "Your ownership of *******@hotmail.com has been verified" email, tried to open it, then got sent a "Unfortunately, we were unable to verify your ownership of this account" email within 10 minutes. Don't have high hopes of clear communication with a hotmail account!).

I can still get into the PayPal account, and this was the only payment recorded. My street address is still listed there. The transaction they made was through eBay Marketplaces GmbH and I can view the full transaction ID, invoice ID, etc. I changed the password to the PayPal account just in case and removed the payment method. PayPal said I can't delete the account because of this pending transaction.

My issue is that PayPal is saying that the dispute will probably be rejected as the name and address is mine, even though I told them that I have never used that Savings account with PayPal at all (it was linked but never had any transactions to or from PayPal), and my current active PayPal has weekly transactions going back years with a different bank account and different email address.

I know it's not much money (luckily!), however I am unsure what to do if the bank or PayPal reject my claims.

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Comments

  • [Deactivated] on 31/05/2021 - 19:41
    +3

    Sorry this has happened to you, OP.

    I know it's not much money (luckily!), however I am unsure what to do if the bank or PayPal reject my claims.

    As an absolute last resort (if necessary), you can lodge a complaint against PayPal with AFCA

    But,

    The transaction they made was through eBay Marketplaces GmbH

    Are you sure this isn't payment for eBay seller fees or the likes? Normally if they were to buy something off an eBay seller it would have the seller's name there…

    • AustraliaObscura on 31/05/2021 - 19:51

      Good point about the seller fees, it does say "automatic payment". I can't see any more info though. It could be someone using my account to pay their fees while they sell on eBay I suppose. I use eBay managed payments for fees now, and in the past I never received PayPal transactions like that when I sold things though.

  • crypticknight on 31/05/2021 - 23:51
    +1

    Something similar happened to me a month ago where an unauthorised purchase was made with my PayPal for $60 to an eBay seller.

    In my experience PayPal was pretty great in getting my money refunded. I raised a support ticket stating that I did not authorise this purchase and within a few hours they accepted my lodgement. Took a couple of days for money to come through and it was done.

    If PayPal rejects for any reason you'd have to wait for the payment to clear before you can lodge a fraudulent claim with your bank for a chargeback.

  • jebdra on 01/06/2021 - 08:15

    I don't want to blame the victim, but why didn't you remove the account from PayPal when you lost access to it?

    • AustraliaObscura on 01/06/2021 - 17:35

      I concede I messed up there, however I never used it, so after years of non-use I had forgotten about the account completely.
      At the back of mind I did think PayPal would be more helpful with closing the account after I requested it though

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