Folks, PayPal is being sued and now there may be developing an elaborate reverse hoax on the net that may prevent you from collecting damages. But as of this writing, the whole process initiated by the letter to PayPal users is very fishy. It almost looks like it has been made to look like a hoax on purpose.

This situation started with a message from a “Ted S**” with this message:

BEWARE: Identity Thieves are using this scam to steal money from your PayPal account. It is a cleaver Human Engineering trick as many people might not be able to resist getting into the act of suing a large company. Even if you don’t have a PayPal account, this type of scam (called Phishing) is found all over the internet. This is why you should never, ever send personal information when requested from an email.

Below is the response from PayPay that describes the email at the bottom of this note as a Phish scam. The FAUX Paypal email is very believable however they are attempting to steal your PayPal identity so they can spend your money.

Just delete this email!!

Ted

Attached to that was this dubious message which was attributed to PayPal.

Dear Ted S**,

Thank you for bringing this suspicious email to our attention. We can confirm that the email you received was not sent to you by PayPal. The website linked to this email is not a registered URL authorized or used by PayPal. We are currently investigating this incident fully. Please do not
enter any personal or financial information into this website.

If you have surrendered any personal or financial information to this fraudulent website, you should immediately log into your PayPal Account and change your password and secret question and answer information. Any compromised financial information should be reported to the appropriate parties.

If you notice any unauthorized activity associated with your PayPal transaction history, please immediately report this to PayPal

Now it’s possible that some person at PayPal just sends out form letters since there have been so many complaints of past spoofing. BUT THIS WHOLE THING COULD BE AN ELABORATE HOAX TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM JOINING THE LAWSUIT. And if that “letter” from PayPal is legitimate and can be duplicated, then a serious honesty situation may be underway. I would guess it to be a mistake, not done on purpose, if it actually came from PayPal. That said, the header on the letter to S*** says “From: Paypal.” The only explanation here is that PayPal was required to send the letter from its servers on behalf of the lawyers and nobody at HQ got the word.

When you look into it a lawsuit is indeed underway and the lead attorneys are owners of the redirect website attached to a lengthy email PayPal customers are getting. In fact the long note looks too elaborate to be a phishing scheme when short hoaxes work best. Also there is no current running hoax on any of the hoax boards that monitor scams. This situation is peculiar. You’ll see if you get a letter. Ok.

Girard Gibbs & De Bartolomeo LLP. Here is the announcement for the lawsuit. The website handling the suit is here and it’s on a slow server that appears to be swamped.

Here is the last PayPal fraud scheme as of this writing as reported by FraudWatch International

Now the problem I have with this situation is that on the letter sent by the attorneys they use a PayPal logo, a PayPal “from” header, and the link clearly says you will be linking to http:/www.paypal.com/settlement. When you execute the link you go elsewhere. Why make the user think they are going through Paypal.com when they are going to some crappy server which is apparently in New York. I have calls into the law firm handling the case asking these specific questions. I’ll post the results on the blog.