Emmanuel, sorry this happened! We can fix it... I sent you an email with my PayPal email address and my cell phone (call/email if you wanna understand what might have happened here). I have also sent his thread off to folks within PP who can help lift/adjust the restriction. Should be sorted in no time, dont lose hope :)
I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
181–190 of 298 posts
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#182Earlier quoted context omitted.
IANAL either, but there's no law against making income, there's a alw against accepting employment. If OP can show he created and sold his own product then that should not violate his visa constraints in any way. In any case, I've never heard of anyone having their income confiscated even if they were a candidate for deportation (though not a lawyer I follow immigration law very closely, it's a pet issue of mine).
There is a law against participating in a business. The only way you are allowed to earn an income is if it is an approved on-campus job.
That's only true for a student in their first academic year, but since we don't really know the OP's specific situation I don't want to get into an argument about details. http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.eb1d4c2a3e5b...
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#183You'll get your money in a few weeks, PayPal are just enjoying the interest for now.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#184From your comments, you had multiple PayPal accounts (disallowed), were in Venezuela, using a US PayPal account, then transferring the funds to a PayPal account in Venezuela, and can't provide a tax ID for the US account. At the same time, you went from zero to hundreds of thousands in payments in just a few months. To PayPal, you likely appear to be a criminal involved in some type of money laundering or tax evasion…
This was a problem for me while moving. I had to completely delete my US paypal account and only then was I able to open another account in an international address. There was no simple way to 'migrate' the account or add another card with an international address.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#185Next time always remember to withdraw your earnings no matter how small the amount, once its in an account other than your bank.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#186Wow, the sheer quantity of unhelpful advice in this thread is simply mind boggling. Hey, let's all hate paypal because they "steal" people's money. Ignoring the seriously thorny legal bramble that the OP has run headlong into with nary a concern. There is a bounteous variety of comments of the form "Paypal sux! {Use X instead!}" Where X may be stripe, or wepay, or whatever. Ignoring the fact that stripe wouldn't help…
I've replied with some very practical advice relating to OP's specific situation (F-1 student) here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5191832 (Sorry if this sounds like I'm promoting it or anything. I just don't want my comment to get buried among the 150+ other comments here.)
I used to be an international student in the US. So I feel OP's pain. I have an advice in addition to winter_blue's. However, I have been out of the US for 3 years and I don't know if any rules have changed since then.
Besides applying for precompletion OPT which will take months and months, a much quicker route for me was to get a part-time job at school. I did this when I was working as a CS tutor in my CS department's lab. This could still be possible for international students, it's definitely worth checking right row. The reason a social security card or a tax ID is needed for international student is solely for tax purposes. Yes, you read it right, we pay sales tax and income tax and don't get to vote or a path to citizenship in less then 20 years. I suspect your funds were frozen because PayPal could not determine whether your money should be considered income or something else. If it's income, you'll have to pay taxes.
I don't know which school you go to, but generally there should be hundreds of part-time jobs in all sorts of variety available at your school to accommodate students in work-study programs. You can apply for a job to be a lab janitor in a day and get your SS card in less than about 2 weeks. Once you have that then you can file a dispute complaint with PayPal.
Good Luck.
---Additional Advice Here After Edit---
If your 200k is saved towards paying for your tuition and living expenses, and you have money problem now, you should talk to your school's international student's office and/or legal counsel immediately. You might be allowed to work off-campus and stay in school under the premise that you are in "economic hardship".
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#187Disclaimer: I have a love hate relationship with Paypal. My organization runs most of our payment processes through Paypal. With that said, some questions: 1) How were you able to process 30k/month through Paypal out of the gate without providing a government ID? 2) How much of the 200K were you able to withdrawal? If any? Do you have any of it in cash? 3) Did you experience an abnormal amount of chargebacks? I'd lov…
33K while I was in Venezuela. I had an old U.S. account, so I wanted to change it to Venezuela. My PayPal U.S. account had crazy address like: Avenida GRGRGR, Estado GRGR, United States. They said to me, you can't change the country, so you should create a new account. I did that, but once I noticed less features in PayPal Venezuela, I decided to keep the same code in my website and move the money from the U.S. accou…
You should lawyer up. Having multiple accounts with intentionally fake adresses and this sum of money may be illegal and punishable according to money laundering laws; and the business may get you thrown out of USA permanently due to visa violation - so you need to protect yourself.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you read any of the comments here before writing your own? What is PayPal getting away with? How would another bank have acted differently? What regulation do you think applies to banks but not to PayPal in this situation? They are all beholden to the PATRIOT Act, and to the IRS; PayPal is also beholden to 50 different states' Money Transmitter licensing regulations. None of them want to be a conduit for interna…
I could ask you same about reading comments... If I am not mistaken a significant percentage of them seem to agree with me and suggest sweeping funds to an actual bank periodically. I apologize if I somehow offended you, but I stand by my statement.
1) he would not be able to get an actual US bank account without getting the legal issues in order;
2) sweeping funds would not prevent either his tax problems or visa problems, which likely are much more serious than simply the locked money.
Sweeping funds would be a nice-to-have - it would have helped, sure, but it's not really a solution.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does someone always write this? PayPal is regulated to exactly the same degree a merchant account from a bank is. Their contracts are essentially identical, mirroring PayPal's own agreements with the banks that underwrite their accounts (Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase). Banks suspend merchant accounts and freeze their money for the same reasons and for the same periods of time, and no regulation stops them from…
I don't recall banks freezing your assets for 6+ months to make sure your business is legit.
I've worked in a bank, and we did freeze accounts on money laundering suspicions - it's not even a choice, the law requires to do so in certain conditions.
And the OP case description is quite unclear, but the details sound like that it might be not "assets frozen while check if business is legit", but actually a threat of "charges filed against owner for circumventing anti-money laundering laws and assets confiscated".
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#190You can get a social security number with you F1 or J1 visa.... I just did when I got my MSc. For example, if you work as a T.A. or R.A. you get a SSN. Good Luck!
If you get a SSN on a F1 visa, you are allowed to work as a T.A. for a limited number of hours - but as soon as full-time commercial job or 200k of business income is reported to that SSN, your visa turns into a ticket back home.