On June 11th, I was the victim in a "scam" involving fraudulent unauthorized purchases via my PayPal account, and because it was connected to my bank account, later almost several 1000s in unsuccessful fraudulent cash transfers to a Dutch bank.


It started with an email asking whether I had authorized the purchase of $947worth of software!!!! HUH?
Phone number supplied but no way do I use THAT NUMBER! I looked up a number for PayPal and called them, but apparently "something else" intervened.


I contacted PayPal (I thought!) and was put in touch with what probably was a fraudulent individual and WAS NOT A PAYPAL REP!!! It then turned into the usual scam using the logonids and passwords I SUPPLIED HIM WITH. Yeah, yeah, I know "never give ANYONE your vital data". I thought I was dealing with a legit PayPal rep/tech! NOT SO! I even let him download a piece of software (Logmein - Rescue!) giving him access to my Mac!

AND PAYPAL DOES NOT PERMIT ANY OF THEIR REPS/TECHS TO DOWNLOAD ANY SOFTWARE on users' computers!

Wells Fargo (WFC) and Paypal have since recovered almost all the stolen money. I'm left however with all the additional grief that this bastard generated. Password and logonids changes galore, new credit cards, new debit cards, new checking and savings accounts, etc.... And trying to remember all the changes required with new logonids and passwords!!!!! I don't know who else may have been victimized by his scam.

I still have the HISTORY generated by my computer and was wondering if this has any value to WFC/PAYPAL in trying to track down this scammer/crook! I've even contacted Earthlink, my ISP to see if they have any data that might be used to track down this SOB. The running interaction between him and myself, etc.... Or is this just another scam cut short but still costly to someone. There's more to this story but I've got to (mercifully!) shorten this for all of you. I still can't believe the brazenness of this whole crime! And that's what this was!

Any suggestions? My suggestions? Never, never, never,.... oh hell, you all know the mantra!

I saw a “suspect spam” email in my old legacy EarthLink account the other day and it sounds like the exact same thing that you got. I never had my old PayPal account linked to my bank account so I knew the supposed charge was bogus, but I will say the email looked more legit than most of the scam emails.
I trashed the email.
If you have EarthLink, I suggest you turn on Suspect email filtering, as EarthLink seems to get a lot of scam emails.

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Roswell, GA (Atlanta suburb)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/2021 04:23PM by rgG.

Holy Crap!

I am so sorry this happened to you, or anyone for that matter.

Several years ago I was lucky to be in the right place at the right time, and was able
to prevent my aging MIL from scams. Once on the phone, and another by a "chimney repair"
person.

Dave

---

Welcome to Dave's BBQ!

Many have eaten here....

Few have died

I had a Messages conversation last week with a "friend." Opening salvo sounded right and had her picture, but the questions became more suspect. I finally said that I had several phone numbers for this person and asked which one I should use and never heard back.

Nothing lost, but unnerving none-the-less.

....sorry to hear.....don't kick yourself too much....anyone can get scammed......glad the casualties were too bad and you were able to recoup most of the losses.......

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_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Ouch! Lesson learned the hard way. Good luck.

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Saint Cloud, Minnesota, where the weather is wonderful even when it isn't.

I never had my old PayPal account linked to my bank account


Same with my current PayPal account.

I'm very distrustful and/or skittish about linking my bank account to anything.

---

I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Quote
RAMd®d
I never had my old PayPal account linked to my bank account


Same with my current PayPal account.

I'm very distrustful and/or skittish about linking my bank account to anything.

Exactly! I've had a checking account with CapOne360 forever that's connected to PayPal to separate it from my real checking account. It's even come in handy for transactions that needed a checking account, instead of savings, that I didn't want to go to the general pool.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2021 08:44AM by mspace.

PayPal has my credit card -- NOT a debit card.

...Good reminder to NEVER call a support number you've just Googled and haven't confirmed on the actual website of the vendor/service.

Doubtful that much of any special value to PayPal or law enforcement is logged. The macOS actually obscures almost all info of value in the system logs in order to protect privacy.

If they opened the Terminal with one of those "your computer may have been hacked, look at this strange invisible 'root' account..." lines then you may have a list of commands in the .bash_history file that's of some interest to you or to anyone curious (careful with any unfamiliar commands that you find there!!), but law-enforcement has undoubtedly seen it all before and doesn't care.

Thank you for sharing. Good luck!!

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Thanks to all who responded to my "tale of woe". Hope that it warns others that the old adage of "never, never, give your vital online info to anyone else" still holds water. I'm including more details of this whole story even though it highlights MY OWN INCREDIBLY GROSS STUPIDITY!


Thank you, Sarcany for your response to my story and inquiry. That's what I was hoping to find out, if anything of value is to be found on the History logs that the Mac creates. It all seems to be encoded in some fashion. I was hoping that there just might be account or phone numbers encoded in the History log but "No". Unfortunately. The sums involved in these frauds and scams are "too small" to warrant much manpower to uncover.


It took me an unusual length of time to get wise to this guy. The most telling clue came when he transferred $3000 from my line-of-credit account to the checking account and then tried to transfer first
$2000 and later "only" $1000 to a bank account in the Netherlands. WHOAAA! It failed because Wells Fargo's software flagged it because of the "Unusual Activity" assosciated with the account and killed the transfers. Thank God!

All of this time, this activity is being acted out on my screen! The "Logmein Rescue" software (an Applet!) he down loaded to my Mac is displaying a running visual account of our interaction. It's displaying my FACE for him to study too though I can't see his!!! AND NOW I'M REALLY BEGINNING TO GET SUSPICIOUS!

Fortunately, with all of my passwords he's using, he stumbles and gets "locked out". Now the final clue! "Call WFC and tell them to unlock the account but DON'T TELL THEM IT WAS ME! WFC doesn't want to deal with Third Parties." Finally my "slow brain" kicks in. I call WFC and the scam begins to collapse!

Now I'm dealing with all the "debris" left over from this crime. New checking/savings/CC accounts, new credit and debit cards, all the logonids and passwords associated with the latter, etc.... Not easy to suddenly deal with all of the latter when you're aged!

My own stupidity is only matched by this bastard's BRAZENNESS in this whole episode! I can''t believe that people can be that criminally calculating, that whatever! Easy enough I guess when there's enough distance or money or ego or whatever involved. Words are beginning to fail me so let me wrap this up.

Embarassing as hell but if someone benefits from reading this account ....



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/22/2021 11:56AM by GeneH.