PayPal Scam Alert

Early this morning, as I was going about my usual morning routine, I received an email from service@paypal.com indicating that I had an outstanding payment due. Being the untrusting sort of fellow that I am, I checked the email headers and it did appear to come from the authentic PayPal. Now, considering I had neither purchased anything nor sent money through PayPal in about a week, my usual untrustingness elevated.

I immediately went to PayPal’s website and verified that, indeed, I had a seemingly legitimate invoice waiting for me to pay, replete with the warning: “Your checking account on file will be charged automatically (for $2,689.00, no less) on November 8th, 2022. If you didn’t make this transaction, please contact PayPal Customer Support at 888-449-1898.”

Seems simple enough. Call customer support and get it canceled, right? However, this blurb was in the Seller note to customer box. Also… that isn’t PayPal’s customer support number.

Note above that the “invoice” is from “Deborah Thompson” (clearly a totally real and absolutely not made up fake name).

Note here that “Deborah” had suddenly become “Best Buy.”

Also note “Invoice #0015.” How lucky to have gotten such a low invoice number from “Best Buy,” especially considering they’ve probably sold a million electronic gizmos and doodads this morning alone.

Also also note that, despite the linguist in me noting that the writing suggests being penned by a native English speaker, there is a space missing in the cost field between the x and the $: 1 x$2,689.00. Another bit of suspiciousness that might suggest a copy/paste job.

To PayPal’s credit, their website informed me that I could ignore the invoice, as the automatic payment nonsense was input by the seller scammer.

It is my sincere hope that you have Googled or (Duck-Duck-Go’d) the phone number or akin to “PayPal scam” and, perhaps, found your way to this warning, and that the information here helps you to avoid getting duped out of your hard-earned money.

And I also hope that (the real) Best Buy ups their anti-fraud game and that the FBI finds “Deborah” and buries “her” up to the duodenum in a fire ant hill.