Paypal Won't Release Funds To Slain Soldier's Family

robustyoungsoul writes "Popular sports blog Deadspin established the Adam Knox Fund for the purpose of raising money in honor of the fallen soldier who was killed in Iraq. They took the donations through a PayPal account. Turns out now, however, PayPal will not release the money due to the way the account was set up on their end."

Comments

The reason why Paypal does this

[Gnpatton]

The reason why Paypal does this is because creating a charity account without being able to provide documents proving your charity status is suspect. It's a red flag. Another red flag is having a new account suddenly receive a massive amount of funds from many individuals.

To make things clear, the types of accounts that is:
A) New accounts
B) Unable to provide documents
C) Receiving many funds from many separate individuals

If you can't guess already.... accounts created by phishing scams!

The fact that this person is not a phishing scam is a travesty on the part that they were suspended, but the FACT REMAINS that they have no possible means to prove their innocence.

Yes I said prove their innocence. This is a company, not a trial. Likewise, they haven't been found guilty either. The reason for the 180 suspension is obvious:

If the people who sent them money start to increasingly cancel their money payments, then, bingo, the account is a scam. If they don't after a given time, say... 180 days, then hey the account is legitimate.

Paypal sucks, but not in this particular case.

Re:Thanks, Slashdot! Worst Paypal scam yet!

[644bd346996]

The deadspin folks claim that paypal wrongly flagged the account as a charity account, and that they (deadspin) did not ask for the acount to be flagged as a charity account. If that is true, paypal has no right to be witholding the money, and they are also obliged to correct their classification error.

Re:Yea, Paypal Sucks, but this is a bit dramatic.

[Dravik]

What I got out of the article is that the guy never claimed to be a non-profit. Paypal classified his account as a non-profit account. So what I got is Paypal screwed up by giving it the wrong classification and is now using their internal SOP's to hold onto the money for an extra 6 months.