> since this scam started making the rounds a few months ago.

A few months ago? I've been getting these intermittently for years.

I don't use Paypal for different reasons, but it still amazes me how popular it is as a tool for scammers. Someone on a different internet forum recently tried an unsophisticated scam impersonating an African aid worker and asking me to send money for the children. I was bored and baited them with computer generated replies. They wouldn't even take cryptocurrency, only Paypal. And it's a similar situation for other scams that are common in my city where they trick people in making bank transfers to the fraudsters account.

I don't understand how there can be so much fraud in legacy finance, and everyone simply accepts it without holding the companies responsible for not cracking down harder. Yet if it's on a public blockchain where everyone can observe the movements, it's supposed to be worse? Wonder how much more of it we'd see if bank books were public.

A few months ago was when I first saw it and it hit the tech news and PayPal finally did something about it. It wouldn't surprise me if it's been around much longer.