[smcl]

I don't get the angle of the "random people" here - is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees? I mean it's stupid but a lot of PayPal stuff is stupid.

> To a point, I am suspecting Paypal pretends to be the random online stranger that sent me the money and then disputed it

I would highly doubt this.

[seszett]

> is it just to cause a nuisance by causing target accounts to incur fees?

Most likely, they give money to a random email address using a stolen card, then dispute it and receive that money back, but now it's clean money because it comes from Paypal.

[smcl]

I suppose, I'm not sure how far these cases get pursued but it feels like you could track the movement of money between a stolen card and the scammer's account if you really wanted. But maybe they give up after seeing a charge to PayPal

[seszett]

It could work within one country, but I suspect they would use stolen US credit cards to get funds on Paypal, but then transfer that money to a bank account in another country where Paypal is unlikely to be able to get it back.

So the owner of the credit card should get their money back from their bank (or credit card company? Not sure how that works in the US) which might get their money back from Paypal if they want to bother, but it's probably too difficult for Paypal to get their money back from some bank in a country where they might not even have physical presence.

[smcl]

Ahhhh yeah that makes sense