FWIW, I've had my PayPal account hacked before. Whether money is taken out or put in, if it is a suspicious transaction they will pretty much immediately lock the account. In my case they thought that me sending a "gift" of $500 seemed like something I would not do. When they lock it you can receive money but cannot send anything, even as a refund if you received money that wasn't yours, until it is resolved. It can only be resolved by contacting paypal from a landline phone, or if you're like me and you only have a cell you have to do it through snail mail, so it can take a while. If in the process paypal determines the transaction was not authorized they will reverse it. You don't really do much about anything. So whoever woke up with the extra cash either a) hasn't used their paypal account in a long time and has no idea that anything is going on, or b) is going through the process of letting PayPal figure it out. If it's an account that was openly listed on some forums, the former is probably likely, or the account is still open and some other loser changed the password and took the funds. Or the even more likely c) he is lying, and he actually did have access to all of the funds, as evidenced by a recent comment in the other forums stating he had over $2000 in his paypal account.