Help! We got scammed to make it look like we committed fraud.

They gave us money through PayPal and when we put it in our account it shows as us depositing checks we've never ever seen nor would ever deposit.

I'm really confused. Where did the checks come in? Money sent via PayPal into your account through transfers.

PayPal shows no history of anything involving the money

This also shouldn't be a thing. Fraudulent or not, PayPal should still show some kind of history or message saying xx transaction was reversed due to fraud. PayPal doesn't just silently remove transactions.

This heavily makes me believe you didn't actually use PayPal but were sent a link to a fake website set up to look like PayPal.

It's incredibly easy to do. I can set up a fake PayPal website in half an hour with the TV on. The scammer will then host it on a look-alike URL (e.g. www.paypa1.com or www.payppal.com) then will harvest your login credentials when you use the fake form to sign on to what you think is PayPal.

the bank believes we deposited said checks through our phones

This was a mobile deposit for sure into your bank account? Any chance you used the same credentials for PayPal and your bank account? If so, this is making way more sense now.

We have no proof that it was not us who deposited any check through mobile deposit

This is on the bank. They should have records of what device and IP address deposited the check. It's not foolproof but it should at least not match up to anything you've used. Unfortunately this is out of your hands. It's entirely on the bank now whether they want to perform an audit of the mobile deposit or not (which they very likely will).

Google never shows us going to a bank to deposit through our travel history.

Doesn't really mean anything unfortunately because something as simple as turning your phone off can do this.

/r/Advice Thread