Sony revokes owner’s access to PlayStation account after user refuses to pay fraudulent charges

While one PlayStation user (their name was not disclosed, their story was shared via AppyGamer) was fast asleep someone logged on to their account, made three payments of $25. The hacker had purchased NBA 2K16 and bought themselves some credits. When the PlayStation owner woke up, they found the charges, as well as alarming emails from PlayStation.

One of the emails asked for the gamer to change their PlayStation account email and another confirmed the email change – the hacker had locked them out of their own account. The unidentified gamer blocked their PlayStation account from accessing their credit card via PayPal, then proceeded to contact Sony.

Sony was willing to switch the emails back, but because PayPal had refunded the gamer their money Sony was at a loss on what to do with the purchases. The gamer then proceeded to contact PayPal and cancel the dispute over $75 and get back to Sony.

Once the player went back to Sony, with the dispute cleared up on PayPal's end, only to be met with a statement saying their "account would be banned" until the $75 in fraudulent charges was paid. This was regardless of the fact that the issue had been cleared up on PayPal's end.

For some reason, Sony wouldn't simply revert the charges back and clear up the situation. According the affected gamer:

"After six years as a paying PlayStation customer, my account was now being held hostage, not by a hacker, but by Sony. I had to cover the cost of the metaphorical broken window, or my account was going to be locked. Basically, I had to apologize and pay for a thief."

Whether they ended up paying the fraudulent charges or not was not revealed.

This is not the first time we have heard a story like this, in fact, it wasn't long ago when we heard about an $8,000 Xbox bill from someone's son buying things.