Potential phishing scam?
"You need to talk to your bank.  If you're unable to contact your bank until Monday, then wait until Monday.  Don't fixate on the idea that the transaction may ""hard post"" on Monday.  If it happens, it happens, but it's not the end of the world. Even if the transaction posts, it's not the end of the world.  If the retailer is legit, they will refund your money, although it may take some time for things to get sorted out. Even if the transaction posts and the retailer is not legit, it's still not the end of the world.  Your bank may help you in trying to recover the funds.  That's why you need to talk to your bank. As you have realized, blindly calling the number in the email is not a good idea, because if it's fake, you're calling the scammers.  Instead, what you should do is try to contact your bank through known trusted channels.  That is, look on your bank's website.  Do they have a phone number listed for fraud reporting or related inquiries?  Is it the same number you see in the email?  If so, you can call it.  If it is not the same number, but the number on your bank's website is a 24-hour number, you can call them at that number and tell them the situation. Based on what you've described, my own guess would be that the retailer is legit, but that the unusual large transaction was flagged by your bank as potentially fraudulent, which is why you got the email.  The fact that you happened to get the email just after canceling the order could be a coincidence.  This is especially true if all this happened in a short time.  Information about these transactions can't be transmitted and analyzed instantaneously, nor can emails be sent instantaneously; there may have been a delay in sending the email so it only arrived after the cancellation. As far as your worries about how ""enfact"" got your info, it is likely a fraud-detection service used by your bank.  Doing a bit of googling reveals that it appears to be a legit service, but there have also been instances of phishing attacks using faked ""enfact"" emails.  However, from what I see, these worked by trying to get you to click on a link, not call a phone number.  Also, if a scammer is able to send you a scam email that includes your actual order details, that's not a phish, it's an outright hack.  In that case the bank and/or retailer (whichever was hacked) would certainly want to know about it and would likely fall all over themselves trying to refund your money to avoid negative PR." Call your bank and inquire if they send out the kinds of notices like the one you received.  Don't call the number in the message, because if it is a scam, you're calling the scammers themselves, more than likely. Be very cautious about this situation, and if your bank is local then it might not hurt to pay a visit to a local branch to talk to someone in person.  Print out the message(s) you receive to show them and let their fraud division look into it.
"In general I don’t think you can blame the news stories. You can blame everyone’s preconceived notion that any sort of LBO or leveraged restructuring is the devil’s work. Every American is of course well-versed in the subject.   From the Sealy example, you clearly have a journalist who has no idea what they are talking about. All you have is a cherry-picked summary of what took place. As such, the “finance scholars” jump in and explain how it’s all a giant scam.  Bain LBO’d Sealy in 1997. As a part of that, it was saddled with ~$700m in debt. That of course is fodder for the ""finance scholars"" because they don't understand the benefits of debt and more generally how LBOs work, none of which are noted in the article.  The article then notes that Sealy has recently encountered trouble. To the ""geniuses"" this is of course because of Romney's work and the ~$700m in debt. No one notices the fact that Bain unloaded this in 2004 for double what it paid for it. For those that did, the unloading was a textbook Bain scam. Bain unloaded this to KKR, perhaps the sharpest and most successful PE firm in history. Would KKR put $1.5b into this if it were a scam? According to the ""geniuses"", of course they would. How could Mitt Romney actually improve a business? No one looks at the fact that revenues were up considerably, margins had expanded tremendously, growth prospects were higher, and FCF yields were fantastic. This is why KKR bought the company, and this is what an LBO is supposed to be. I haven't done a ton of work on this case, it was before my time, but I would be very surprised if the growth wasn't accompanied by employee expansion as well.  You also get the “I wish I had a way to just walk away from my debt” comment. I don’t even know where to begin explaining how asinine that is. Equity is subordinated to debt. That’s the definition of equity.   The article also notes the one-sided-mattress idea, which is construed as Romney's giant scam to screw the average American while flipping this company and making his millions. The article of course didn't note that this one-sided mattress idea was a mere fraction of revenue. This was designed as an economy mattress, with an advertised shorter shelf life. Plus how can this be a scam? Would you go into the mattress store and pay the same amount for a mattress with only one side? If you would you deserve to get half of a mattress.  So the crux of it is, this is in actuality an example of what an LBO should be. At least for Bain’s part. Bain took a business that was ripe for an LBO (reasonable steady FCF, low leverage), did the LBO, improved the business, and came out on top. What KKR did with it afterwords I have no idea. I would imagine it has more to do with deteriorating business conditions than the debt on its balance sheet.  I work with restructurings over 100 hours a week. I of course don’t come up with the plans (I’m a lowly analyst building models and associated bitchwork) but I see just how brilliant these ideas are. In a lot of cases restructurings prevent the tripping of covenants and associated bankruptcy and allow for strategy to play out and for companies to grow. I can of course give a more detailed rant on the article, but I figured no one will read this anyway." "A friend since July online and big business talks and trust/money forwards.  Usually a question ""is this a scam or legitimate?"" is hard to answer since obviously scams are modelled after legitimate stories (or they'd easily fail). If there were bookmakers for ""scam or legitimate"", this one would easily gather odds of 10000:1.  The only plausible reason for this to be legitimate would be to defraud the scam-or-legitimate bookmakers. At any rate, Exxon is a large company and has to obey labor laws.  They cannot set up operations in a manner where their workers may not have access to their salary for prolonged times without easy remedy. Drop communications immediately, don't open them, don't read them.  They hook you with emotional investment.  They will redouble efforts if it appears you are slipping out of their reach.  Explanations will become more plausible, more pressing, more emotionally charged.  You are a big promising fish and they won't let you swim off without a serious struggle to rehook you. Hand your communication so far to law enforcement.  That may help with not having to figure this out on your own." The classic Nigerian scam involves sending fraudulent cashier's checks to unwitting recipients who then deposit them in their account.  The bank reverses these deposits once they discover the check is not valid.  At least in the US and in the parts of the EU I'm familiar with (the Netherlands), the method of the Nigerian scam is consistent and banks will reverse the deposit after some holding period. Given this, it's unlikely that most banks will convert an arbitrary cashier's check to cash without any means to recover the amount should the check be fraudulent. What you found is that when your were on website X on day y when you clicked on the link they told you to buy 7 stocks and you performed an experiment, but the values went down. Somebody else on website A on day B saw a lightly different list, they may have been flat. But if you were on website W on day D that list hit the jackpot. Which of the three decided that the people running the ad knew what they were talking about? They could have tailored the list based on the nature of the website. Sports and recreation ones on ESPN, high tech on a computer focus site. They could have varied the size of the lit, they could have varied the way they described their analysis. They could have even varied the name of the expert to make it sound familiar or authoritative.  What you found was a marketing plan. It may have been a scam, or it may have been just a way to try and convince you they know what they were doing. If you clicked on the wrong list, they probably lost you as a potential customer, unless you can convince yourself that they were close, and deserve a second look.... "As a woman who was once married to someone who worked offshore in the North Sea, in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Nova Scotia, in fact all over the world...and my husband's rig was contracted through Exxon (by the way, Exxon contracts rigs, but doesn't own any), this is most certainly a scam.  Even if you do not believe all the above information, I will tell you this.  Offshore oil companies will either have schedules consisting of two weeks on/two weeks off or one month on/one month off.  If he is in the Gulf of Mexico, it is almost certainly two weeks on/two off.  Which means this ""person"" who is your ""friend"" is lying to you, because contract or not, no employer holds any employee on the rig for an entire year.  In addition, he can leave the rig anytime he wants to, due to a personal emergency.  And no, once a paycheck is deposited in an employee's account, they cannot take it back.  LOL!! I would like to see them try!!  Don't do this.  It will only cause you heartbreak.  And since all of the posters recommending that you NOT fall for this POS line of bull have nothing to gain, guess who is telling the truth?  It's not your ""FRIEND""!" Yes, there is; you are correct. Once I register my phone to the WiFi, the store has access to my phone's IP address, so that's how they ultimately identify me. I just use a spurious email address because I do not want all the spam and advertisements sent to my email. If you haven't noticed, the minute you provide your email to a company, organization, etc., all of a sudden you start getting emails for random places (third-parties).   I like you, Sarah. You're a sharp interlocutor that loves to confabulate. You keep me on my toes lol There are several red flags here. can they get my bank account info in any way from me transferring money to them? Probably yes. Almost all bank transactions are auditable, and intentionally cause a money track. This track can be followed from both sides. If they can use your bank account as if they were you, that is a bit deeper than what you are asking, but yes they (and the polish cops) can find you through that transfer. I did look up the company and didn't find any scam or complaints concerning them. Not finding scams or complains is good, but what did you find? Did you find good reviews, the company website, its register, etc, etc? How far back does the website goes (try the wayback machine) Making a cardboard front company is very easy, and if they are into identity theft the company is under some guy in guam that never heard of poland or paypal. As @Andrew said above, it is probably a scam. I'd add that this scam leverages on the how easier is to get a PayPal refund compared to a regular bank transfer. It is almost impossible to get the money back on an international transaction. Usually reverting a bank transfer requires the agreement in writing of the receiver and of both banks. As for paypal, just a dispute from the other user: You are responsible for all Reversals, Chargebacks, fees, fines, penalties and other liability incurred by PayPal, a PayPal User, or a third party caused by your use of the Services and/or arising from your breach of this Agreement. You agree to reimburse PayPal, a User, or a third party for any and all such liability. (source) Also, you might be violating the TOS: Allow your use of the Service to present to PayPal a risk of non-compliance with PayPal’s anti-money laundering, counter terrorist financing and similar regulatory obligations (including, without limitation, where we cannot verify your identity or you fail to complete the steps to lift your sending, receiving or withdrawal limit in accordance with sections 3.3, 4.1 and 6.3 or where you expose PayPal to the risk of any regulatory fines by European, US or other authorities for processing your transactions); (emphasis mine, source) So even if the PayPal transfer is not disputed, how can you be sure you are not laundering money? Are you being paid well enough to assume that risk? "Any time someone starts asking you to provide personal information, such as a birth date, it could very well be a scam.  This is especially true if it's someone you don't even know.  Be very careful about getting involved in such situations. There is always some kind of almost believable story to what the scammers tell you, and unless you're willing to look deeper into it then it's easy to get pulled in.  On top of that, you have to ask yourself, ""why did they pick me for this?"", because that's the real question.   You have no idea what else the software they're asking you to download might do that you wouldn't know about, but offering to pay you something is a good way for them to get you to bypass your own security by installing it yourself.  If the offer sounds too good to be true or too easy, you have to question it, and in such cases, your best bet is to stay away from it altogether."