# PayPal one-cent scam: what do I do with the penny?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-one-cent-scam-what-do-i-do-with-the-penny/1020401>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [July 2, 2025, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-one-cent-scam-what-do-i-do-with-the-penny/1020401 "2025-07-02T14:35:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 16

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**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\
**Post date:** [July 2, 2025, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/paypal-one-cent-scam-what-do-i-do-with-the-penny/1020401/16 "2025-07-02T15:26:10Z")

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This looks like the same scam as this, but they spend a penny to make it seem more legit. The main thing is to put the fake phone number into the text of the PayPal notice so they can send a real message directly from PayPal:

> [@How does this PayPal payment request scam work?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-does-this-paypal-payment-request-scam-work/1011126):
>
> I got two seemingly unrelated emails today notifying me that I have PayPal payment requests. I do have a PayPal account. There is a link in each email to go to PayPal to make payment. The link is for a [paypal.com](http://paypal.com) URL so on the surface the URL seems legit (the payment request itself is definitely not legit). It prompts me to login, but it does this even if I am already logged in on another tab, which I would not expect. But I’m not going to login to that page just to see what happens in case it’s…

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