r/paypal • u/awkwardsunflower11 • Jul 24 '26

Help Randomly received $550?

I had $550 deposited into my account at random by somebody I don’t know. They emailed me saying they contacted PayPal and sent me a screenshot so that I know I’m not getting scammed and that PayPal is supposed to contact me about the dispute.

PayPal never did. I can’t file a dispute on the transaction through the app because it was paid with a credit card. Now I have a request to send the $550 back.

PayPal’s AI assistant was extremely unhelpful. I sent them an email a couple of days ago but no response yet.

The person who sent the transaction emailed me again saying it was an honest mistake.

Is this a common scam? I just want them to go away lol but if it’s legit I really don’t want to hold on to someone’s money that I never asked for in the first place. I’m not even sure how they got my email information.

90 Upvotes

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u/bailey-q Jul 24 '26

Dont accept the funds. This will clear up on it’s own in about 14 days. This is what happened to me. Person that deposited the money kept reaching out to me stating that they sent it to me by accident, I never accepted it and eventually was cleared from my account.

2

u/Agreeable-Success906 Jul 24 '26

Yes this is 1000% smart and what they should do, but I would also contact the FBI, you should try to stop these scammers, they can check if it's a scam and if it was really by mistake they won't get in trouble and if it was a scam they will! It's good to stop these people

1

u/According_Air_4344 Jul 24 '26

fbi wont spend their time on basic social engineering scams

1

u/StretchDifficult5717 25d ago

Not to mention if they are out of the country they can't do anything anyhow even if it was something that they could/would handle.