Razer Zephyr Mask Buyers Who Never Cashed Their FTC Check Are Getting a PayPal Payment Instead, With 30 Days to Accept It

A paper check from the Federal Trade Commission that never got cashed is a small loose end, and for a group of Razer Zephyr mask buyers it is the reason a PayPal payment may soon appear. The FTC is reissuing refunds to people who did not cash their earlier check, this time through PayPal, and recipients have 30 days to accept the payment, according to the agency’s Razer refund page.

The first checks went out in January 2025 and resulted in more than $906,000 in refunds.

A Mask Priced at $99.99 and Sold as N95-Grade

The money goes back to people who bought Zephyr face masks or related products from Razer, the gaming hardware company. The FTC’s April 2024 announcement said Razer advertised the Zephyr as N95 or N95-equivalent and as protection against COVID-19. The agency alleged that Razer never submitted the masks to the FDA or NIOSH and never obtained N95 certification or permission to use the term, and that it stopped the advertising only after negative press and consumer outrage.

Sales began in October 2021, online and in stores in Seattle, San Francisco and Las Vegas. The standard Zephyr cost $99.99 with one mask and three filter sets. The Starter Pack cost $149.99 and included one mask and 33 filter sets, and the Filter Pack cost $29.99 for 10 filter sets.

The proposed settlement required Razer and its affiliated entities to pay $1,071,254.33, an amount equal to their mask revenue, which the FTC planned to use for full consumer refunds, plus a $100,000 civil penalty. Samuel Levine, then director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the announcement that the FTC “will continue to hold accountable businesses that use false and unsubstantiated claims.” The proposed order also bars COVID-19 prevention or treatment claims without FDA approval and requires competent and reliable scientific evidence for health or performance claims about protective products. The Commission voted 3-0, and the Department of Justice filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

From Check to PayPal in Two Rounds

The FTC’s Jan. 13, 2025 announcement said the agency was sending more than $1 million in full refunds to 6,764 consumers, by check and by PayPal, with the administrator Simpluris handling questions at 1-833-285-3003. The refund page now says that round resulted in more than $906,000 in refunds. The gap between the two figures is roughly $100,000.

The new PayPal payments are the agency’s second attempt at those uncashed checks. The FTC’s refund FAQ says reissues of expired checks may be possible if funds remain, that they are generally processed monthly and that a check cannot be issued until at least 45 days after a PayPal payment date. Leftover money that cannot be distributed goes to the U.S. Treasury. The FAQ also says attorneys and FTC staff are not paid from settlement money, and that only direct administrative costs such as printing and mailing come out of it.

Readers who saw the similar PayPal rollout for Cleo AI cash advance customers will recognize the structure: a short window, a payment that waits in the recipient’s PayPal account and an administrator phone line for questions.

Checking That a PayPal Notice Is the Real Thing

Unexpected money invites imitators, and the FTC has said so for years. Its consumer alert “FTC Refunds: The real deal or not?” says the agency does not charge fees to receive a refund and never asks for remote access to a computer. Anyone who claims to be from the FTC and asks for money or account details, the alert says, is running a scam, and such contacts can be reported at ftc.gov/complaint.

The same alert points readers to ftc.gov/refunds, where the case, the company paying out and a working phone number are listed. For Razer, the refund page gives the administrator line as 1-833-285-3003, the same number the agency published in January 2025.

What Razer Said and What Was Never Decided

The refunds rest on allegations that Razer settled rather than fought. According to TechCrunch’s report on the April 2024 settlement, a Razer representative said the company disagrees with the allegations and admitted no wrongdoing, settled to avoid the distraction of litigation, and had notified customers more than two years earlier that the Zephyr was not an N95 mask, stopped sales and issued refunds.

The FTC’s refund page tells the story differently on one point: it says the masks were never certified as N95. Both versions can be true at once. A court never ruled on the claims, and the refunds come from a negotiated payment, not a verdict.

For recipients, the practical question is narrower than the legal one. The refund page gives 30 days as the time to accept the PayPal payment, and questions about whether a payment was sent go to Simpluris at the same administrator line.

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: NurseTogether – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons