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I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

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101–110 of 298 posts

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#101
Sad story, I agree with folks who say you should seek out legal advice.

HEADS UP FOR ANYONE ELSE CONSIDERING THIS:

If you are going to receive funds with PayPal and they are going to exceed the 'occasional sale' guidelines (which some people interpret to mean the same guidelines at the rule for sending an IRS 1099 form which is First establish your business presence in the US, that means creating an LLC, getting an EIN [1] and establishing a relationship with a US based bank.

If you get hung up on those steps, don't start taking money with PayPal because their zealous anti-fraud/laundering/drug program fires on a hair trigger. It didn't help that the OP is a student from Venezuela which is not one of America's trading partners.

I expect you will lose most of this money in legal fees. However, if the business is durable, and you manage to establish your LLC (that lawyer you got can help with that) then you will make it back and PayPal will back down. As long as the money trail can be tracked and everyone in the path reports it to the Federal Government so that they are satisfied it isn't part of a laundering scheme[2], or if it was they can catch the folks involved, you will be ok.

[1] http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Taxpa...

[2] This is how the laundering scheme would work. Some criminal enterprise hires a bunch of third parties to buy your 'widget' for an inflated price, say $10,000 per copy. You sell the 20 copies, get the $200,000, now you go to a coffee shop owned by the criminal enterprise and buy a Double Vente Latte for $180,000 made out of hand picked coffee beans. The crook now has $180,000 of "legitimate" income from his coffee shop, you have $20,000 in "profits" on your amazing Javascript widget, and 20 drug dealers have a bit of software they just delete from their hard drive (if they down loaded it at all). Everybody "wins." So the US Government wants to be able to subpoena your customer list to track the money from the drug dealers to you and then back to the crooks. Paypal helps with that. If you make it hard for them to do that, they keep you money.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#102
post #88
post #46

Concur with javajosh's recommendation to find a California/USA-based lawyer for help. Advice from semi-anonymous strangers in internet forums is worth what you pay for it. Generally, in the search for a lawyer, you get to talk to many (without charge) for 15-45 minutes each. You may be surprised how widely their estimations of the issues vary -- the law is the law, right? -- but you'll learn something from each conve…

legal confidentiality means... IANAL, but I don't believe you have attorney-client privilege until you formally hire the lawyer. So if you are calling ten lawyers and getting advice, there is no guarantee of privilege.

Pretty sure that's not correct.

It would destroy the potential for candid consultations to determine whether a case should be taken.

From the attorney's perspective, the inability to guarantee privilege might cause them to incorrectly advise a client on their potential to help.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#103
post #96
post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

legal confidentiality means... IANAL, but I don't believe you have attorney-client privilege until you formally hire the lawyer. So if you are calling ten lawyers and getting advice, there is no guarantee of privilege.

According to the lawyer across the table, privilege starts with the first conversation.

Interesting BUT what if the lawyer has a conflict of interest and learns that during the initial conversation before committing to representing you. Does that mean he/she cannot use the information you provided to defend the interest he currently represents assuming he refused to represent you?

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#104
INAL either, but I have gone through the ITIN process. If you follow this route you will need to send notarized documents(birth certs, passports). The difficulty is that the US will not recognize notarized by any one out side the US. This was not explicitly stated(a few years ago), after having ITIN applications rejected 3 times, we took the paperwork to the US consulate, they processed it and it was all good.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#105
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As another foreign business owner taking payments from the US, I really wish I could. There is practically no alternative to it outside of US/Europe, and wire transfers are too much hassle, take too long and end up costing the same. I do take my money out of PayPal as fast as I can.

There's actually a good alternative in Europe and so on: https://www.paymill.com/ it's basically like stripe.

[deleted]

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#106
post #54
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this world, one must be born rich...

It makes it easier, but it could also be said that you should have checked the Terms and Services contract with Paypal.

I started my commercial project in Venezuela, but using a U.S. account.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#107
post #47
post #23

Sorry to hear about the troubles :( If this wasn't the umpteenth time I've heard this story, I wouldn't say this so pesteringly: To everyone: Stop stop stop stop stop using PayPal. This happens over and over again. For once, thankfully, there are viable alternatives out there -- Stripe & WePay to name two (both of which I've had excellent experiences with). Not saying they're panaceas or that there won't be security/…

This may be a non-starter for this gentleman. Both Stripe and WePay have SSN requirement of sorts: https://stripe.com/us/help/faq#do-i-need-an-SSN https://support.wepay.com/entries/313535-why-are-you-asking-...

Yea, this kind of general advice do not always apply in specific cases like this.

Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account

#110

Hi Emmanuel, I'm sorry for your troubles. Sounds like Paypal is being unreasonable - hardly the first time. I would suggest a two-pronged approach: 1. Find a lawyer who can advise you, definitely based in the US, and almost certainly based on CA, the home state of PayPal. As you (potentially) have $200k in cash, you'll have no problem finding excellent representation. Hopefully you can get away with spending only a f…

How is PayPal being unreasonable? A person without a SSN has received $200,000 in their PayPal account. I would be surprised if PayPal didn't freeze that account.
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