Don't get caught in this paypal/affiliate scam

I want to type you out a little story about a mistake I made back in November. this has to be one of the best scams I have ever seen in my life, and I wanted to warn anybody that accepts affiliates to use your head before approving them. I know this will invite comments, and i'm not sure which direction this thread will go, but i'm only making this thread to warn others to use their heads in a similar situation...

About November 1st I started selling a product on a affiliate platform attached to paypal. I started getting requests, and at first i did due diligence and started asking questions, etc. Approved some, denied some, etc. the sales started happening a few days later, and everything looked ok. More affiliates started applying, so I stopped being so careful and approved a number more. Everything looks good right? WRONG.

About a week later I got my first chargeback. I called paypal right away, told them I didn't know what it was about, and refunded it. Didn't seem like anything crazy, wrote the affiliate to ask them about it, didn't hear back. Banned them.

fast forward a few weeks, sales are pouring in daily. Everything looks good. Suddenly, a few more chargebacks started sneaking in. I called paypal every time, and discovered that the chargebacks were all from affiliate accounts sending me traffic. At this point, i had about 5 chargebacks in on 3 different affiliates, and sales were still happening. So, i disabled those affiliates, refunded the payments, and moved on.

few more days later, now more chargebacks coming in. I went in and disabled the payment buttons and refunded every single transaction from affiliates. we're talking 2500 bucks worth. even then, there were 5 affiliates sending me these sales and so i didn't want to take any further risk, so i ended it. I paid those affiliates more than 1000 dollars of my money, and when i refunded the transactions, those people still had half my money. I called paypal and explained it ALL in great details. I was told "we're looking into it" 'we take fraud seriously" and etc. Never heard anything else, so called them back again. At one point, they ACTUALLY TOLD me while looking through my history that they couldn't confirm those affiliate payments were made on my behalf, to those fraudulent accounts. EVEN THOUGH in my history, you see payment to me, then to the affiliate platform, then exactly 50% to the same fraud paypal account holders, over and over and over again.


Paypal has now started working with me on the situation, and I admire them handling this with me. Will i get my money back? doubtful. Will they be fully versed in the scam at the end of this? i hope so. Hopefully paypal will take this sort of thing seriously, as undoubtedly I am not the FIRST or LAST to have set myself up like this.

Here's the moral of the story..i'll put it in nice big letters

If you work with an affiliate platform, whoever it is, that has adaptive payment solutions that work with paypal, you better make sure you don't approve affiliates you don't recognize, or you may fall victim to the same results. I'll say it again: DO NOT approve your affiliates on instant payments until you know and or have a history with them.

This was a very stupid decision on my part and it has cost me. From what I am finding out, paypal is not going to be returning my money to me. So, this has been a very nice lesson learned.


DON'T fall for the same scam. Use your head with your affiliate requests guys


I hope this helps somebody out.

have a great day,
Matt

Kudos to paypal: they have communicated with me, and I found the history when I downloaded it. They have since started disputes on every single transaction. I don't believe i will recover the money from dead accounts, however it does bring me some comfort that they are taking the situation seriously, and giving me their attention on it.