I was getting lunch today and handed the cashier my PayPal debit card to pay. She handed it back to me saying it was declined. I thought it was odd since I knew I had some money in it when I sold a bunch of tools last month. When I got home today, I went online to see what the problem was. Some asshole in Brazil got a hold of my account information and started charging a bunch of charges to AUTO POSTO and Rodeo Bar in Brazil under my account.

I immediately called PayPal to dispute the charges. There are a total of ten charges in the past two days and the bastard took $587.00 from me. PayPal told me that they filed a dispute on my behalf and I should get my money back within a couple of days. They also cancelled my card and will send me out a new one tomorrow.

I can’t figure out how the hell someone got my account info. I’m very careful not handing out any of my information to anyone under any circumstances and my PayPal password is not a simple one. I keep thinking about odd things that happened to me in the past few weeks and how someone could have gotten info from me. The only thing I can think of is a few weeks ago, a guy in Brazil with zero feedback placed a bid on one my auctions, then emailed me asking to cancel the transaction. I went into eBay and cancelled it a few days later but can’t figure out how he would have been able to get my account info from that. It may be just a coincidence but I’m done shipping international in eBay. So if you sell on eBay and have someone with zero feedbacks ask you to do something for them, don’t.

I think it’s bullshit that PayPal didn’t freeze my account when the first transaction came through from brazil let alone ten. Any other credit card company would have blocked my account immediately. Once I get my $587.00 back in PayPal account, I’m withdrawing it immediately and sticking it in my bank.