Huge PayPal Negative Balance. HELP!

I badly need a serious advice. I owe PayPal $5900 because I was scammed by a Ukraine national. My situation went like this.

I am from the Philippines. I work as a Virtual Assistant. I saw this job posting on a legit online job portal and applied for it. The position was Virtual Financial Assistant. I got accepted. My job is to receive payments from my "employer" company's clients on my PayPal account, withdraw the money to my bank account and forward it to them via Western Union. I got my first transfer. It was a payment for a fake item they listed on eBay which costs $5900. Days after I forwarded the money to them, the buyer filed a dispute about not receiving the item. Because I don't have any proofs of shipment for the item he payed for, he got his full refund. Now I am the one having the debt on PayPal. I have contacted PayPal a lot of times already, sent them messages showing proof of my conversation with the scammer and receipt of the transfer but they told me they can't do anything for my case because the money has been withdrawed already. I also reported the eBay user on eBay. They filed a case and said they are going to investigate the user and see if he has violated any terms but the problem is they won't be able to give me updates on the case because of privacy reasons and even if they find suspicious actions on the user they still can't help me with my case because the transaction happened on PayPal. The eBay user has a 100% positive feedback, has past smooth transactions on his profile and is a member since 2011. I just wanted eBay to investigate the user and if found guilty have him pay the debt by locating his past PayPal account linked to his eBay account, but this seems impossible based on the reply I got from my past call. I have my personal information on my PayPal account, correct name and address. What will happen if I don't pay PayPal? I am not possibly paying for the money I don't have on-hand and I am not capable of paying this huge amount of money. I am also planning to close my bank account linked to my PayPal. I've read that if I don't pay my debt in 3 months, PayPal will pass my debt to a collection agency. I am from the Philippines. Will they still locate me? Will they take legal actions against me if I refuse to pay the debt even with the collection agency going after me? I badly need an advice. If there's anyone who can help I would be very grateful.

is it just me or this sound like you ... its probably just me

RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

Shie.Chie said:

Will they still locate me? Will they take legal actions against me if I refuse to pay the debt even with the collection agency going after me? I badly need an advice. If there's anyone who can help I would be very grateful.

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Yes, ofcourse they will. You think they just let it go if you close your pp or your bankaccount?

Omg, I can't believe how stupid people are sometimes.

You were used as a money mule, and those guys who hired you are operating fraud and scam schemes.. you should be more careful and think with your head.

lol

luc1fer said:

You were used as a money mule, and those guys who hired you are operating fraud and scam schemes.. you should be more careful and think with your head.

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I don't think so. A money mule transfers illegal money for a small payment. OP just got scammed. He got tricked into selling a non-existing item on eBay for nearly 6k.

So you helped people scam eBay users for your own gain. They didn't get what they paid for so got a refund, you report THEM for being a scam?

You were/are well aware of what you were doing and got caught out.

You lost, you are part of the problem

Money Laundering springs to mind here.

ThatSEO said:

So you helped people scam eBay users for your own gain. They didn't get what they paid for so got a refund, you report THEM for being a scam?

You were/are well aware of what you were doing and got caught out.

You lost, you are part of the problem

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I was just used. I had know idea they were up to no good. I was also scammed. I was referring to the eBay seller, not the buyer. I wanted the seller to be investigated and instead of me paying the debt, they should be the one paying for it because they already had the money. I know I was stupid to trust those people and did not think of the consequences that might happen but I would just like to say I was not part of the original plan of scamming people. I was just used.

You should of asked yourself "why the hell would someone let their customer send me 6k? Why wouldn't they collect the money themselves? "

You should have the address and name of the scammer you sent the money to. Your best bet is to explain what happened to western union...that you were scammed. Maybe they can get the person who collect the money arrested because the real scammer would of went there to pick up the money... Unless they are pros and sent another money mule to collect the money from western union.

Jinyus said:

You should of asked yourself "why the hell would someone let their customer send me 6k? Why wouldn't they collect the money themselves? "

You should have the address and name of the scammer you sent the money to. Your best bet is to explain to western union that you were scammed. Maybe they can get the person who collect the money arrested because the real scammer would of went there to pick up the money... Unless they are pros and sent another money mule to collect the money from western union.

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I have the information of the receiver although I suspect he's using a fake name, I still have the receipt of the transfer. We already went to Western Union and reported the receiver. They said they blocked the man who claimed the money to prevent him from receiving money on Western Union in the future.

Timatan said:

I don't think so. A money mule transfers illegal money for a small payment. OP just got scammed. He got tricked into selling a non-existing item on eBay for nearly 6k.

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Well fraudsters are running these schemes for years.. and money mules are definitly not being used only for small payments not sure where u heard that. In this case they didnt use hacked bank accs to transfer money to him, but they scammed someone on ebay and used his paypal to receive payment from buyer.. OP wasnt selling anything these scammers did under some fake ebay account with good feedback which you can buy on dark forums for some cheap money. He was probably told to keep some money after withdrawal or that he will get payed later for doing this work, otherwise why would he accept this job in first place. Look for lawyer advice mate thats all i can tell you, but you can believe whatever you want..

Timatan said:

I don't think so. A money mule transfers illegal money for a small payment. OP just got scammed. He got tricked into selling a non-existing item on eBay for nearly 6k.

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Well he probably helped transfer money illegally he just didn't get paid for it.

Close the bank account, edit the address in your PP to something else, lay low and hope for the best, i.e. they don't find you and/or have unsuccessful sue case. Keep all evidence you have of the WU transfer and any correspondence with the scammer as well just in case, these may come handy unfortunately. If worst case scenario happens try to prove in court you weren't intentionally deceiving people.

Sounds if they shouldn't be able to prove intent, thus releasing you from criminal liability, so the worse case is you'll be forced to pay the bill in the end, but that's only if they find you and are able to prove their case in court, might take years.

luc1fer said:

Well fraudsters are running these schemes for years.. and money mules are definitly not being used only for small payments not sure where u heard that. In this case they didnt use hacked bank accs to transfer money to him, but they scammed someone on ebay and used his paypal to receive payment from buyer.. OP wasnt selling anything these scammers did under some fake ebay account with good feedback which you can buy on dark forums for some cheap money. He was probably told to keep some money after withdrawal or that he will get payed later for doing this work, otherwise why would he accept this job in first place. Look for lawyer advice mate thats all i can tell you, but you can believe whatever you want..

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You got me wrong. I didn't mean a small amount of illegal money I meant a small percentage as payment for the mule.

In this case though the whole scam was build upon someone paying OP in PayPal, make him transfer this money via bank and then claim it back. So the whole thing was intentionally set up to make OP pay, not the buyer. I am pretty sure the buyer on ebay is even OP's "employer"

OMG feel very pity for you OP they just use you and scam the buyer, but I just suggest you should run

Timatan said:

You got me wrong. I didn't mean a small amount of illegal money I meant a small percentage as payment for the mule.

In this case though the whole scam was build upon someone paying OP in PayPal, make him transfer this money via bank and then claim it back. So the whole thing was intentionally set up to make OP pay, not the buyer. I am pretty sure the buyer on ebay is even OP's "employer"

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Here comes it think about this OP

Go to the local police and explain them what happened. Make them lodge an report against the person in question. This advice might sound silly, but this is the only way you can keep your ass cleaned from this case. Even if paypal does something in future ( which is unlikely because your are from Philippines ), you will have this report in your defense.

This is a very serious crime you have been victim of and it has to be dealt seriously. Asking for help in an online forum wouldn't help much imho. I have been victim of a scam (tech support scam) my self in past ( but that was like $1000, not $5000) and I went to the police immediately and explained them everything in details. Even showed them all the proofs I had in my defense. That did help and the guys stopped harassing me ( but it wasn't paypal who were after me. Paypal was just the payment processor in my case... and that's a different story lol).