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This "novel" "scam" has been around since 2000 when Request Money was launched.

People have been sending paper invoices to the overworked accounting departments of companies for a very long time. (Or the slightly more sophisticated "office supply" scam where they send unsolicited some low grade office supplies with a very large invoice which has been going around since the 1970s).

Ah, the good old days of phone calls telling you that they were checking in, and were going to send over the "usual order", just needed a quick ok.

Similarly when I used to own a liquor store and the distributors would come in at the busiest times and say, "Oh, you're busy. Don't worry, I'll check your inventory for you, and you just have to sign off." Sign off, that is, on a huge list of stuff you don't need.

The scammer here doesn't seriously expect anyone to pay up—they expect people to call the phone number they include in the message so they can move on to phase 2 of the scam (whatever that is).

The PayPal invoice form is just a sufficiently scary-looking template to trigger a reaction in someone who might fall for a phone call with the "Coinbase Billing Department". The amount on the invoice is too high for people to accidentally pay but too low to immediately clue the victim in that it's fake.

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