Abiword's PayPal Donation Fund Robbed

SabberFlapper writes "According to this Announcement to the developer list of Abiword the Abiword fund was robbed. Dom Lachowicz writes: 'I'm duty bound to let you all know that the AbiWord Fund/Tip Jar has been robbed approximately three weeks ago. I'm telling you this now, rather than sooner, since I believed that Paypal would do something about my complaints during the interim, and that this would all be resolved quietly. Today, 23 days later, this does not look like it will happen. [..] I do however, recommend doing several things: 1) Writing to Paypal, in letter, email, or fax form alerting them to this travesty. 2) Calling Paypal on AbiWord's behalf. 3) Writing or calling your Congressman/woman, pointing out that Paypal is acting like a bank, but not operating under formal banking laws. 4) Boycotting Paypal because of these reasons, and the fact that their system is notoriously insecure, and encouraging others to do the same.'" Of all the groups to steal from -- AbiWord?

Comments

How was it done?

[Anonymous Coward]

Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post.

Re:How was it done?

[alexburke]

Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post.

How about this? Could Dom have been suckered by such a message? (More details here.)

Re:How was it done?

[Jucius Maximus]

"Can somebody explain how this theft occurred. It's not clear to me from the post."

Typically what happens with PayPal cases like these (they're extremely common) is that the account is "restricted" from some trivial reason like a cancelled payment or for no reason at all, and then it is impossible to withdraw money from the account. Then PayPal will start making unauthorised withdrawals from you bank account and credit card. They won't unrestrict the account until you fax them utility bills, social security card scans, drivers license scans, etc multiple times because they always claim they they didn't receive the information. Even then, it is rare to get the account un-restricted. Complaints and investigations by police, government, etc tend to get the account nuked. And of course you never get your money back.

Hence, you have been 'robbed' by paypal.

What surprises me

[einhverfr]

is that any business which faces any regulatory liability would not stand by their customers, esp. under a threat of letter writing campagns to congressmen who have the potential to do some real damage via congressional inquiries....

Re:What surprises me

[alexburke]

PayPal isn't a bank. They don't claim to be a bank. They are not insured like a bank. So why should they have to act like one? They are a payment clearinghouse.

I call bullshit -- or at least misinformed.

Not only do you accrue interest on the cash balance in your PayPal "account", they also have a money market fund you can invest in.

If they aren't trying to be a bank but saying otherwise, I... never mind.

My point is that PayPal are whores with the ethics of a petty thief, and I sincerely hope eBay straightens them right out.

However, since I read about the debacle of eBay CSRs getting told off for shutting down questionable auctions because those auctions belonged to Power Sellers (eBay's most profitable customers), I'm now questioning eBay's ethics/morals as well.

*sigh*...

Re:What surprises me

[Grax]

There is no excuse for not having live telephone-answering customer service. Imagine if your local bookstore quit answering the phone because they do all their business in the store and none on the phone.

I quit using Amazon.com after I decided I needed to call them and discovered that their "Contact Us" page does not contain a phone number.

I encourage everyone to boycott companies that try to avoid spending money on a very necessary call center. Sprint ($5 if you want to make a credit card payment while talking to a live representative), Amazon.com (I dare you to find a phone number on the 'Contact Us' page), and any others.

Re:What surprises me

[edwolb]

Bullshit. If you're going to provide a service such as accepting credit card payments, you have to have a secure way of handling them. It's absurd that you could legally provide a service such as money collection and not guarantee that you were given every penny you were promised. Shame on paypal...

Re:What surprises me

[SurfsUp]

Western Union isn't a bank, and neither is PayPal.

Why did you just post 17 articles in defense of Pay Pal?

Re:What surprises me

[mosch]

I've had to deal with amazon.com's customer service, and it's no problem. They don't have a phone number, but they answer emails quickly and helpfully.

sprint on the other hand is a really disappointing company... i'm getting rid of sprint, though for entirely different reasons.

That's revolting...

[Archie Steel]

For my part, I will personally write Paypal and tell them that I no longer feel that their service is secure enough for me and that their treatment of victims robbed through their service is rotten.

The question is, what other services are there in Internet space that does the same thing they do? Any banks trying to offer secure payment over the Internet?

Pro-bono lawyers might help here

[no_such_user]

I hate to jump to "lawsuit!", but this is an instance where a sternly-worded letter from a lawyer might at the very least get their attention. Unfortunately, you'll end up spending more than the stolen funds to pay said lawyer.

Any lawyers out there willing to help out AbiWord pro bono?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:How was it stolen?

[murgee]

This is, of course, assuming that everyone trying to get into PayPal is after big bucks anyway (doing it professionally).. when it's quite likely they could have been targeted by someone who's just experimenting and hit something small to lessen their chances of getting caught (or, at least, trying not to get into too much trouble.. you might suspect that if the person raided a several thousand/tenthousand dollar account they'd be up against a lot more, punishment-wise).

Of course, isn't the purpetrator's name tagged to the transaction? You have to have a valid bank account to move funds out of your PayPal account.. wouldn't it just make it that much harder to hide from the authorities if you broke in to someone's account and moved stuff over?

This reminds me of when lowendmac got hit last month (earlier this month.. something like that). It's unfortunate PayPal has "critical mass" or whathaveyou. You'd think that someone big would care, but they can't even be bothered to work with all banks.

Done and Done...

[Incongruity]

After reading about all the trouble with paypal, I have cancelled my account. I will now also be sending their customer service folks an email explaining why I cancelled my account.

Even if they do outsource their support to India, I'd bet they keep some sort of stats about emails and the issues covered...maybe if enough people complain and cancel their accounts someone will listen...unlikely but it's worth a hope.

-tcp

Pay Pal is sleazy

[SurfsUp]

My wife opened a Paypal account for me, and one for herself, then transferred $6,000 from my account to hers. We didn't see that money again for three months, as they pretended to be "investigating" the transaction for possible fraud. Never mind that we talked to them many times on the telephone, and send proof of our ownership of the accounts several times, and pleaded with them to resolve this, as we needed the money.

The delay was beyond any point of being able to pretend that they actually made any effort to resolve the situation. It was in fact more than 10 days after we first contacted them before they would even open what they call an "investigation". They claim that their procedures are set up to combat fraud, but it's just a way of establishing deniability. That is, they pretend that they have no intention whatever of stringing me along as long as they can, while they collect interest on my money. (And no, they never did offer any compensation for the lost interest, let alone the many hours we were forced to spend pursuing them, to get our money back.)

You think mine is an isolated case? It is by no means. Just do a web search for paypal+complaint. See all the distressed people. See the lawsuits.

It's a transparent scam: by locking up the money of only a certain percentage of their customers, and treating the rest reasonably well, the people who claim that Pay Pal engages in a pattern of sleazy misconduct will never be believed, because they will always be outnumbered by customers who have never had a problem.

That doesn't make it right.

Re:No Recourse?

[joshki]

The FBI doesn't care unless there's over something like 25k involved. 600 dollars in a donation fund isn't even going to get them to bat an eye, unfortunately.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Don't give them bank details

[mbogosian]

This is why I don't give PayPal my banking details no matter how much they try to bluff them out of me.

Schwab has deposit-only account/routing numbers for all their accounts (they're the ones given out for direct deposit, currently under Account -> Transfers & Payments -> Direct Deposit). If money is attempted to be removed using the same numbers, an "account not found" error is given (saving the fees from both ends associated with the "account overdrawn" error). This works with PayPal, because they verify your account by depositing small amounts of money into it (which will work).

Granted, you have to have quite a bit of dough for it to make sense to use Schwab for checking, but it would be interesting to know if any other banks provide this kind of service. Of course, it would be more useful if one could pressure all banks to provide this. Then again, I guess the ultimate solution would be to have the same consumer protections that apply to credit cards also apply to one's account/routing numbers.