watch out for this scam

this was so well orchestrated that i almost got caught by it!

after receiving a shady email that I bought crypto with my paypal account (I knew the email looked bogus but went to go check out my paypal account to get peace of mind anyway)

I went ahead to my web browser and put in paypal.com only for this PHONY webpage (albeit didn’t look phony in the moment) to pop up instead. It said my paypal account was locked out due to suspicious activity with a phone number to call to resolve the issue. (I tried a couple of times in a new page and it was still happening)

I didn’t realize until after the phone call that the URL was not related to paypal. I’m almost certain I double checked the URL too before I called and during the call and it was fine which is even more strange! IDK, Maybe I’m misremembering.

they had me download “AnyDesk” Remote Desktop which made me uneasy but other legitimate companies have also done this to troubleshoot issues, so i proceeded.

They then had me basically sign up for a Paypal debit card to use more securely which started to make me more uncomfortable. They were hardly giving me time to read through it.

They then tried to make me Zelle hundreds of dollars to my own name (registered to a different name) with a phone number they provided. This is when all my alarm bells officially went off and I told them NO, I’m not comfortable with doing that. They tried to say it was like a code to block the phony attempts made on my paypal. If I don’t go through with it then he will approve those transactions since they couldn’t prove I was the authorized account user. He got very aggressive with me as I started to argue the logic of this entire phone call. I asked to speak to his supervisor (they put me on hold and came back to say their supervisor is unavailable with another phone call; I said of course they aren’t) I was very certain this was a SCAM at this point and hung up.

This was a very sophisticated attempt and needs to be given attention. I clearly input paypal.com into my browser and was redirected to this fraudulent webpage without me noticing!

I called the real paypal to let them know and sent a detailed email to phishing@paypal because I was so close to getting gotten!