It seems that you haven't used PayPal for a long time or you are just not affected yet. I made this post to raise awareness so this is probably relevant to all of you here. I'm not Chris Money Maker, I'm just one of the many affected sellers around the world. This is not related to a particular high risk business. This can happen to anyone of you.
PayPal are running a huge scheme to steal money from sellers. There is a big issue with this company that the media is not covering. The long story short is that PayPal is running a huge scheme to steal hard earned seller's money under the false claim of damages caused by acceptable use policy violations.
What is happening is that PayPal randomly limit seller's accounts some of them are operating since many years ago and no matter what they are selling they just firstly get permanently limited without providing much information. After PayPal limit the seller's account they hold their funds in PayPal own interest bearing checking accounts for up to 180 days. They claim they do that to cover any credit card disputes and they will release the funds after 180 days. Before the end of the 180 days PayPal empty the seller's balance and transfer all the funds to themselves under the false claim of damages caused to PayPal by acceptable use policy violation(s).
PayPal's terms of service is very vague and it states that they can deduct up to $2500 USD per violation. What is happening here is way too far because they just randomly empty the seller's balance and transfer it all to themselves.
There are 5 main points here:
1- PayPal unjust enrichment by gaining interest off the held funds that isn't paid out to the customer after 180 days
2- PayPal claiming a nonexistent damage. The amount of money taken randomly by PayPal as liquidated damages is unenforceable penalty under the US law. PayPal has no right to randomly seize seller's funds. The liquidated damage taken by PayPal was simply a random arbitrary amount.
3- It doesn't matter if the user broke their Acceptable Use Policy or not because PayPal seizing money randomly is unjustified under their own terms.
4- PayPal abusing their powers as a monopoly and 300 billion dollars company operating worldwide and handling people's money without a proper regulation.
5- PayPal acted in bad faith when they have crafted their acceptable use policy. Their main intention is stealing seller's hard earned money. If this money must be seized it must be the work of the government or the court and it is not PayPal's business. They also made it very hard for small seller to sue them because of the high legal fees that most sellers can't afford.
PayPal started this scheme since late 2019 and began enforcing this on a large scale in 2021. Most sellers who had their PayPal accounts limited in the past 2 years had their balance stolen by PayPal.
A simple Google search about the term "Damages caused to PayPal by acceptable use policy violation" you will find hundreds of sellers got robbed by PayPal. Some of them posted their story on PayPal's own community forum. There are also Discord groups discussing this like:
Join the Paypal Lawsuit AUP Discord Server!
Google Search Link
One Example story from PayPal community:
Their is a proof of PayPal's bad faith. They usually reply aggressively in private when the customer complain but when a celebrity like the poker player Chris pointed this out here:
They just chickened out after several days and refunded his money after they knew he is going to sue them.
Eric Bensamochan Law Firm and Poker Player Chris Money maker are starting a class action lawsuit regarding this scandal. What PayPal doing is unjust and it must be stopped. They must pay back the money to all these sellers.
You can contact the Law firm for more information about the class action.
I hope that I made this clear. Anyone here in the same situation has opportunity to get money back by joining the Class Action. I've been in contact with Mr. Eric and informed me that anyone from any country can be included.
If anyone here still using PayPal please take care as this company is highly corrupt and not trustworthy anymore.
Thank you all
