You should contact David Marcus, Paypal's relatively new CEO. At least one other HN thread shows his willingness to help: http://ndy.gd/JJgB
I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
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Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#32Find a person with your name in US, use his SSN and pay him 10% of your earnings.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#33Were you lying about being an american student?
No, I had an old U.S. account and I wasn't able to change the country. I created a venezuelan account later on, but I saw that the U.S. account provided some features, so I stupidly thought that was ok to then transfer the money to the Venezuelan account. I started to sell licenses while I was outside the U.S.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#34Lawyer up. This is ridiculous.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#35Where does PayPal ask for an SSN? That doesn't sound right.
As of 2011, all payment processors must report the gross receipts of all merchants earning over $20,000 in a year (like Emmanuel) on a Form 1099-K. This form requires a taxpayer identification number. PayPal has to ask for it to file the form. They've also always asked for it as part of their underwriting of accounts that trip their fraud detection systems in some way -- which a sudden jump in payments like this would also do.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#36Sad to hear this, I've used and appreciated turn.js. Hopefully the tax situation works itself out as other commenters have described.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#37You have $200k sitting in your paypal account? Don't you have a bank account? What country are you in? What exactly did they say to you? How you mean you 'don't know how' you made $200k - you didn't expect to sell so much, or you sold $200k in one go with no idea who gave it to you? This seriously needs more information.
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Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#38Why do people keep using Paypal ? Paypal is always taking money from people. Always! It's interesting what's going to happen here. If he can't get his money, is Paypal going to have it ? Why is there the assumption this guy is in the US ? Even if this guy was not legally in the US, this is still his money. If you are young and don't have a national insurance number yet, ask them to change your account holder to one o…
Like, we couldn't use a chunk of that 200K here in the US to fix our bulging deficit. This is why we have it.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#39I'm flabbergasted by how 200k can be reached within six months with that product.
Actually, I got a very good feedback. Google saw the new turn.js and wanted to promote the next release by the way.
Re: I made $200K and PayPal locked my account
#40I was always wondering, if PayPal locks a 200k$ account, where does that money go?
Typically, to the account holder either (a) after they submit the requested documentation or (b) after 180 days if their account was terminated in order to cover future chargebacks. You just don't read that part of the story because people write about it on day one, not after they understand and have resolved the problem.