Getting even with paypal with COMPLETE anonymity

Hello everyone.

This is a report of a previous topic which i think i posted too hastily.
I am studying system security at the university and came up with a question, after a friend got scammed with a paypal transaction.
I am posting a half-real, half-hypotetical situation that interested me enough to study it and understand it clearly.

Please note that most of this already happened, so it works. It was done unintentionally, and Ann was the one that got scammed.

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Ann has a paypal account, registed with fake personal info, and sells a service to Bob for 50$. After doing this, Ann imediately transfers the money to Charlie, who has his own paypal account.
Charlie receives 50$ on his account, and transfers the money to his bank account.
Bob, maybe trying to scam Ann, or maybe not (we dont know this), opens a dispute with paypal, and since Ann was selling a service, with no tangible proof that she actually provided it, Bob gets a full refund. (NOTE 1)

Results:
Ann gets his account blocked because she has a negative 50$ balance on her account. She doesn't care about losing this account, as she will never access it again.
Bob most probably has gotten his money back, because paypal refunded him.
Charlie has transfered the money to his bank account. Paypal will probably try to get its money back.

NOTE 1: I dont know whether Bob actually received the full refund or not. I think it did, because Paypal has paid his refund even if Ann's account was empty.
Paypal, of course, will ask Ann for its money back. Anyone can confirm if Paypal has refunded Bob or not?

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Please note that everything that i wrote up there, has actually happened. It works, and it's confirmed that it does.

Now let's try to abstract things a little.

Let's say Ann is completely anonymous to paypal: she has fake personal info, and she used a Wifi connection with a laptop somewhere far from home, and masked her MAC address.
Bob did the same, and funded his paypal account through an anonymous gift card.
Charlie is currently not anonymous because he transferred funds to his bank account.

But let's suppose Charlie is able to transfer the money to a giftcard which does NOT have his personal info on it, and followed the same steps (laptop, wifi, mac masking) as Ann and Bob did. Let's say Charlie is lucky enough to have found this credit card lying on the ground, along with its secret codes.



Question:
By looking at the above situation, can anyone point flaws that enable someone to trace the money? Think high, think Police or Feds. Do you think they could trace the money, assuming Charlie has found a way to transfer it to a nameless credit card while following the same procedure as Ann and Bob to remain anonymous?
Can you think of any flaws or methods of tracing that could stop Charlie from getting away with the money, or at least trace him?

cuz it's fraud? and doesn't work.. paypal 'll trace/close all accounts.

This is straight up Fraud, not Blackhat
Posted via Mobile Device

Several problems.

1 - You need to get money into the account somehow for the first purchase, thus losing any bit of anomity.
2 - You cannot withdrawl gift card balaces from an ATM.
3 - You don't get the refund until they have the balance in the account.
4 - They will just ban all the accounts.
5 - How does no one have the ability to trace the money? Did you forget about the camera in each ATM? Or the camera in the store you use the card at?

So many flaws. Move on.

He mentioned the cameras at the ATM, but the first 4 on the list are a sure thing...

Fail
Entity a will have a 21 day hold on his money as it's a new account.
This is BHW not n00bsRus. Go back to school and try and impress us
with some IM stuff.

Before you try figuring out a plan to rip off Paypal, don't you think you should understand how it works and what their policies are? If you did you would know why your plan doesn't work at several stages.

TermsB said:

Several problems.

1 - You need to get money into the account somehow for the first purchase, thus losing any bit of anomity.
2 - You cannot withdrawl gift card balaces from an ATM.
3 - You don't get the refund until they have the balance in the account.
4 - They will just ban all the accounts.
5 - How does no one have the ability to trace the money? Did you forget about the camera in each ATM? Or the camera in the store you use the card at?

So many flaws. Move on.

Click to expand...

1- Again, loaded by giftcard
2- You actually can with at least one gift card. Even if you couldn't, Entity A STILL has money on the paypal account which he can use for anything which doesnt require mailing. Heck, even a donation, as long as paypal pays back.
3- Nope, that's the exact same way that the friend got scammed. They will use THEIR money to refund money to B.
4- We dont care if the accounts get banned
5- Minor point.


Anyway, keep in mind that i WANT you to point out flaws. I am learning WHY this is not working, NOT trying to make it work.

It still seems like a huge effort to go to, just to scam paypal.

There are also so many flaws in your plan. How much are you looking to have the initial electronic product sell for. Bearing in mind that will be doing this just the once?

Nah, there are better ways to earn a living.

You are almost guaranteed to make more money by writing this up into an eBook, and flogging it @DF and WF.

lol. Then you can do a runner with their money once they start demanding refunds. At least that method scales.

@OP: Several members told you exactly why this is NOT going to work. So, just move on.
Or, if you can't let go, just try it and then come back with your results.

I think i posted this up too hastily.

I will write something better explaining what i'm trying to accomplish by making this.

I'm just interested in the theory, actually, not how much you can earn because that was not the intent of the topic.

I will probably edit out (if possible) and post it somewhere else, maybe along the lines of "how to transfer money from/to paypal by being completely anonymous"

peter2002 said:

Or, if you can't let go, just try it and then come back with your results.

Click to expand...

Actually, that was done, unintentionally, but not anonymously. So i was exploring the possibilities of doing all this while remaining anon.

Because all of those transfers that i pointed out ALREADY HAPPENED and worked, and were not a scam, rather a miscomprehension, except the fact that i do not know whether Entity B has actually received money back or not.

Possible if you can withdraw the money without linking your own bank account.
If your gonna do it illigal just go full out.. for $200 its not worth going to jail.
GO BIG or go home


Soo..

Set up 20 ebay accounts(aged account(100+ feedback))
Buy 20 paypal accounts(date before payment holds)
Get someone to make you 20 FAKE bank accounts and provide you with the atm card
Set up $20k worth of items on ebay, sell and run away with the money.

Every reply up until this point was referred to an old version of the post.
I have reposted everything to make the example more clear.

Thanks

:alcoholic........:reddy:

The problematic transaction is between Ann and Bob, the transfer to Charlie could be seen as suspicious by GayPal but they will try the refund from Ann.

The whole thing is flawed because its not anon. Charlie is going to get burned.


Lets start here.

Bob gets his money back from ann, but the money has to come from somewhere..

Paypal sees Ann has made a transaction.. with Charlie..

Legit or not, or suspicions or not..Paypal sends Charlie an email saying, you were involved in a transaction that was fraudulent and was traced that you were in recipient of lost funds... Paypal takes back the funds from you and says, please look into reporting to the police, or contacting the place where the service was purchased. WHY dose charlie get screwed, because paypal has a very nice policy that anything SOLD OUTSIDE of ebay is not covered by protection, so your fucked.. trust me, I have tried to fight outside ebay purchases and services)

In the end, money ends up with bob.. there is no magical $50 that you get to keep.

There is NO way to scam the pay pal system out of money unless all your parties are anon, and you can peel funds with a fake bank,

So the only solution is to get a fake bank account with atm card.. but that's fraud.

Now I'm not saying to go do this, because you will go to jail for a very very very very long time... I'm giving you a hypothetical solution to what your trying to achieve.

Anyways how did your friend get scammed ... because im sure the issue should be with the person who scammed you. Paypal just has their policy;s written so that if they lose money and cant hit the scammer they hit the buyer.. or seller.

agkfal said:

The whole thing is flawed because its not anon. Charlie is going to get burned.


Lets start here.

Bob gets his money back from ann, but the money has to come from somewhere..

Click to expand...

Yes, from paypal; since Ann no longer has money, and Charlie has transferred his. But paypal will try to recoup, of course. But HOW will it do this?

Paypal sees Ann has made a transaction.. with Charlie..

Click to expand...

Yes, so Charlie will probably get his account blocked. But as i said, Charlie is anon and has gotten the funds transferred to a credit card with no personal info on it.

In the end, money ends up with bob.. there is no magical $50 that you get to keep.

Click to expand...

By the time Paypal has given the funds to Bob, Charlie has already transferred the funds away. Ann has no funds. Charlie's account is empty. Bob has his money, and it's legit according to paypal.

So the question is:

Will Bob have his funds removed, because paypal cannot find a way to recoup from the loss?

agkfal said:

Anyways how did your friend get scammed ... because im sure the issue should be with the person who scammed you. Paypal just has their policy;s written so that if they lose money and cant hit the scammer they hit the buyer.. or seller.

Click to expand...

Ann sold an account on a site. Bob paid Ann, and Ann transferred the funds to Charlie; Charlie removed the funds from paypal.

Bob then said the transaction was not authorized, and Ann gets into negative.
They DO NOT do anything to Charlie because he's a third party and not involved. If they did, which i'm sure they would do if the amount transferred was significant, they could get to him.

Ann was scammed by Bob; however, she transfered the funds to Charlie, a friend, as a precaution.


The question was if Charlie could be traced with the money, if he was able to remain anon as i described. For example, he could buy a service (which does not require shipment), from a Wifi network, hiding his mac address.
In this case, will paypal be the only one that lost money, and would it be able to trace him somehow?

Oh, and i also wanted to say that there is no "question" between anyone. Ann actually got the funds back by transfering the funds to Charlie. Bob no longer has the service, because Ann managed to get it back.
However, i think this may be interesting to anyone which lost funds to paypal and wants to get even.

Sure if its anon all the way , it would work but its still called fraud and will land you in jail sooner or later.