I think Phil is laundering stolen credit cards into paypal tips (in minecraft). Its pretty easy and cheap to buy a bundle of stolen credit cards off the spooky dark web. Then all you have to do it have people use those credit card to send paypal tips, if they are done in 2-5 dollar increments they may mostly go unspotted. I agree he is too much of a chicken shit and too incompetent to actually do that himself, but I believe he would have no problem ordering his cultists to do it for him and letting them do all the dirty work. Hell, a whale or derich may have originally proposed the idea to him. I really like this theory as it explains a few things:
1) Phils familiarity with the chargeback/refund process on paypal.
2)Why the "refund trolls" seem to come in waves.
3)Why people like derich are allowed to stick around and get his attention despite not providing any pha$ativity to his stream.