Legal Question in Business Law in California

PayPal�s blackmailing me for personal information, but my credit card says they are committing identity theft?

Had my PayPal account blocked ($6,000 in it) and was asked for a copy of drivers license, invoices and tracking numbers to items sold.

(1) I called in and explained I don�t drive and if I can send a copy of school ID. They said no and transferred me to supervisor

(2) Supervisor said if I don�t send in copy than I won�t get paid. I told him your asking for something I don�t have, and gave him permission to refund the payments and I hung up. Five minutes later he calls me back and tells me not to worry about the ID, but he does want to see invoices to make sure items are authentic and tracking numbers to see items were delivered without complaints. He said after those two I�ll get my account back. So I go ahead and ship out and upload invoices, yet my account isn�t unblocked.

(3) Call in again, another supervisor verifies invoices are legit and items were delivered two weeks ago without complaints. But now he tells me I need to go get an ID, send them a copy of my social security card and a copy of a credit card statement showing the whole card number.

(4) I call bank of america to figure out how to get a card statement online and upload it to paypal while she�s on the phone. She asked if I needed to look up a certain charge and I said no and explained I was sending the statement to paypal. She talks to me like I�m an idiot �why would you even send that to anyone?� She puts a fraud alert on my account, says she cancelled out the card and I�ll get a new card with new number in the mail

(5) I call PayPal back and tell them what Bank of America tells me, and he plays the safe card �I wasn�t the one to ask for that� and continues with �I am not sure why anyone here would even ask for that�.

So, basically they lied to me so they wouldn�t have to refund the 25 buyers and explain to them how they failed, at my expense of having my funds locked.

Even though I provided invoices showing items were real, and items were all signed for and delivered and positive feedback left, they told me they are holding my money for 180 days to protect against chargebacks.

$1,500 of the $6,000 was a personal payment from my dad to pay for books and just some extra money. You can�t file a chargeback or dispute a personal payment. I asked paypal to release that and they said their system doesn�t �allow� to release any payments.


Asked on 1/19/16, 4:29 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

It sounds very much like in your steps 1), 2) and 3 you were not dealing with PayPal but rather an identity theft operation posing as PayPal. Because you got sucked in, BofA and the real PayPal are now (very appropriately) treating your accounts as compromised.

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you immediately do some research on identity theft and how to prevent it. That you would even consider sending credit card statements will your full address and account number on it to ANYONE, is a clear indication that you have no CLUE how to protect yourself. While rude and inappropriate, that is exactly why the BofA person was talking to you like you are an idiot. I'm sure you're not an idiot, but you are pretty clearly extremely naive and unaware about identity theft. You need to take this as a cheap lesson. They could have ruined you financially if you had not had to call BofA and had just sent them your statements.

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Answered on 1/19/16, 8:12 am


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