WARNING: If you receive a PayPal payment request from someone claiming to be Ethan Klein. DO NOT send them money. Anyone can open a PayPal Biz account & set the name to anything they want. It's even easier to create a gmail acct. spoofing Ethan's name. Here's how I know... /1 https://twitter.com/h3h3productions/status/1264632256338984960

The email from PayPal reads like this:

Ethan Klein sent you a payment request.

Note from Ethan Klein:
"H. E. L. P. winner ding ding ding! Congrats on winning $500! All you need to do is send me $5 for confirmation that this isn't a bot! Papa bless!"

/2

I didn't check Twitter until AFTER I sent the money, ostensibly to confirm that I'm a real person. But in the heat of the moment, I didn't pause to think it through. Turns out, I wasn't one of yesterday's winners.

"Why didn't you think it through man?" you say? Read on... /3

1st - I was in a hurry. I had an interview this morning.
2nd - I am in dire financial straits.
3rd - I was & am severely sleep deprived from financial stress and trying to find and take on as many paying gigs as I can.

Days with almost no sleep makes a one functionally drunk /4

I suppose the scammer assumes that no one would publicly report this out of shame. After all, who would allow themselves to look so stupid as to fall for this?

I'm sharing this as a PSA. Because the scammer could easily skim $5 off of thousands of desperate people. /5

I think I know who did it too. They also posted a giveaway. Which I responded to via DM as instructed. They asked me where I'm from. And when I checked the next day, they had blocked me. I'll find the screen name of the suspect... /6

Okay, not only did they block me, but I can't find any trace of them anymore. I made the mistake of leaving the conversation thread this morning after "she" (or whoever it was) blocked me. Logged in with another account to find her the same way I stumbled on yesterday. Gone. /7

Well, I guess that's all I have to report. I hope this spares others from getting hoodwinked. And that @h3h3productions sees this & alerts his followers. Meanwhile, I'll dispute the payment at PayPal. Fingers crossed. That $10 would have put food on the table.

UPDATE: PayPal denied my dispute. There was no other option to choose other than "unauthorized". Apparently, PayPal's "reviewers" are fine with scammers using their service to bilk desperate people out of their money.

You need to revisit your dispute process @PayPal. Did a human actually review my case @AskPayPal? Or do you guys really not care that so many people are getting scammed like this? Please see the beginning of this thread for the full details.