Let the buyer beware

I had other plans for my Saturday evening and Sunday morning, but I’m obsessed with understanding how I have a $3000 charge on my Paypal account that I helped a scammer create. In my initial excitement, I had signed up for a trial of Linkedin premium account thinking that it would be helpful in launching this blog. A month went by and I had almost forgotten I did it and was shocked to see a year’s subscription of $684 deducted from my checking account. I was panicked and desperate to clear this charge. I called what I thought was Paypal support, 530 792-9935 (don’t trust this number). I was routed a few times until I was instructed to allow them to VNC onto my phone so that they could create a credit account to refund the unauthorized purchase. Never let anyone VNC onto your phone! I don’t know what I was thinking, clearly not thinking. A few days later, I was informed by Paypal that my claim was denied since I had actually authorized it with Linkedin by accepted the free trial. So now I have a Paypal credit account with a line of credit of $3500. I used it for a couple of small purchases to test if it was active and when I went in to make a payment a week later, I find a charge of $3000 with an invoice by Paxt Shoot for Linkedin recovery. I have reported this fraud to a validated Paypal customer service agent and have hope that this will be resolved, but feel extremely stupid for falling into this trap.