How Scammers Open a Fake Paypal Account

Paypal is a safe online payment option but still everything is possible to manipulate in our computer world. A false paypal account can be opened within 15 minutes. So do not base your thrust on the fact a seller is using paypal. A direct method will of course not be discussed here as this is a fraud prevention not fraud creation website. But I will give some basic information so you know what is possible and how you can protect yourself. A paypal account without a real name and other proper personal information will be opened by two kinds of people:

a) people who can't use paypal
b) scammers

If you live in a first world country you will have full access to paypal unless, for some reason, your account got limited or restricted. For many other countries paypal either is not supported or access restricted to only sending money, receiving is impossible. With such a high demand for paypal, businesses and individuals, almost must have this payment option in order to exist in the online world. Nevertheless it is a benefit to have paypal as some will pay only with it. So these people, if skilled enough, sometimes use fake accounts or open accounts in other countries where they have a official document or friends.

But the other majority is using this to steal from people and money laundring. Paypal system needs a few things from you to be able to register with them:

a) Personal information
b) eMail
c) Your IP and registering country must match
d) Identity Confirmation
e) Telephone Number
f) Bank Account

Scammer can have any name, any address, any country he desires for he knows how to fool the paypal system. It does not matter what your real name is you can type in anything that comes into your head. And that is because he knows how to confirm a false identity. For those of you who already have a paypal account know how the identity procedure looks like. You have to add a bank account and your credit card then you wait for the expuse number which appears on your monthly credit card statement and enter it into paypal. How to solve this? A bank account can be opened online easily. Some banks require only a scan of your ID to open an account with them. A little photoshop magic and you are done. Next step is the credit card, how do you get a credit card that will verify a false identity? Easy and cheap! It won't cost you more than 15$! Many big companies such as amazon sell gift cards. You know how hard it is to buy a good present for your wife, kids or friends. Gift cards were the perfect solution, you give your friend a gift card with the desired amount of cash and he buys himself exactly what he wants. These giftcards must be neutral, work on any name so you can give it to your loved one. Scammers took advantage of this and used cards like these or VCC's (Virtual Credit Cards) to verify their false identities on paypal and many other online companies. Sometimes paypal calls their customers to verify them or let them know of some important changes/notices. so if you would have provided a false number and are unreachable they will most likely limit your account. A new number untraceable can be obtained easily, the best way the scammers use is Skype! Walla, this is how easy it is for scammers to open up a false verified paypal account!