Venmo and Paypal Are Stalling Urgent Efforts to Bail People Out of Jail
vice.com
vice.com
However PayPal stands out for me as THE worst company in finance.
One colleague has over $25k that has been held pending company verification for AML reasons. This has been ongoing for over 1.5 years every time he completes the requirement PayPal issues additional requirements. And the according to email replies he received, the department responsible for such case reviews has been on leave for 3 months due to COVID.
What does PayPal do with money that is frozen? Are they allowed to gain from it?
I now always advocate strongly against using Paypal.
My account funds were frozen and paypal requested proof of purchase. At this point as a poor high school student I was flabbergasted they could withhold my money for no reason.
I reached out to both relatives, explained what happened and told them about the receipt paypal requested. Both send me a copy of the receipt which I supplied. Paypal rejected the receipts (I forget the reason) and told me they were not going to release the funds.
I determined they could only hold it for 6 months (I don't remember the legal reasons here). Therefore, I parked my account paypal account, 6 months later took my money and never looked back.
PayPal should just ask the seller to have the original purchaser make a statutory declaration stating the item was a gift to a relative / friend, maybe provide some sort of supporting documentation to prove the relationship.
https://www.ag.gov.au/legal-system/statutory-declarations/wh...
Your point still stands, you may not know any of those people who are willing to witness a stat dec below the value of the funds in question.
What is not right is presenting their service as easy to use, letting people sign up and sell items and then essentially steal the money unless they are lucky enough to pass their broken verification process.
>I reached out to both relatives, explained what happened and told them about the receipt paypal requested. Both send me a copy of the receipt which I supplied.
Sounds like the worst possible outcome. You no longer had the iPods. You didn’t get the money. The relatives found out you didn’t like their gift.
Waiting 6 months is a nice hack, but how about the guy who has waited 18 months for $25k? Does he just need to stop pestering them for 6 months and voilà? Or is the rule different above $5k? Or outside the US? Or outside Europe?
This reminds me of when PayPal told me I needed to send them a scan of my drivers license, then rejected it as fake. ???
The upside is that my account isn't allowed to hold a balance, and they transfer any funds immediately to my bank, which... I dunno that seems like my account has been improved?
Somewhat related funny: a friend of mine lived/s on "Isis Court". His Venmo transfers were always delayed/held for review for what we suspect are obvious reasons that the implementation of the State Department sanctioned persons list seems to be a substring match, ignoring that there are extremely relevant semantic differences between Isis that can show up in a street address in the USA and an employer/organization name in Western Asia.
That said, there are enough posts on PayPalSucks.com to scare a person away from using PayPal without lots of redundant/protective measures.
One of the main complaints was they never paid the interest on the money, so I'd assume they were making money off of it.
[0] https://www.apwip.com/a-dollar-today-is-worth-more-than-a-do...
They shut the fucking door knowing this.
It seems almost like insurance companies. Deny first , make claimant jump through hoop after hoop hope they give up.
What happens to the money then? This is very interesting because if they can profit from this we all the more disturbing.
Size seems to corrupt. Any examples if shining, upstanding, beneficent megacorps?
My first experience litigating with paypal actually dates to years right after my secondary, when I was an exchange student in Singapore.
I had a paypal registered on my Russian debit card, and used it for trading on ebay.
And yes, one nice day I learned that they want me to prove them that I am not Bennie Laden, with each successive document submission being less, and less reasonable, like demanding a notarised bank statement with wording that no sane Russian bank would issue in its right mind.
So, I read the contract, and I saw "agree to dispute resolution under law of Republic of Singapore," which was a rather weird thing to see on a commercial contract from Paypal Russia LLC.
And so, I got the name of the case officer at Paypal, and had a writ of summon delivered to him in person, myself in a few days. There was no way to describe terror on his face. I remember an exchange:
- "Are you that person lawyer?"
- "No, I am that guy"
They settled on the first hearing.
Only few years later, it came to me that they could have buried me with legal fees, even with court fees alone if they've chosen to continue.
It bugs me that people don't name bad cops personally in lawsuits. Sure, sue the city for employing them even after all they have done over the years, but sue them personally for injury / suffering.
As for a writ of summon form, I picked it in the hall in the court building.
More precisely: who do you recommend using that has an interface designed for a non-technical person to be able to send and receive money without much more hassle than setting up an account, verifying their identity, and connecting a bank account or three?
And they're complaining that Paypal or Venmo isn't willing to disable automated fraud protections for a payment method thats only meant to be for individual to individual transfers?
Some months ago, they asked me to provide charity information for my personal account, and subsequently limited my receiving/sending privileges.
Phone calls to them trying to sort this out have always ended up at some call centre in the Philippines, where the agents can only tell their users that the account limitation is "for their safety".
That account of mine is still limited.
They've also limited the personal account of a friend of mine (who was interestingly enough ex-PayPal) before, also asking for charity information.
Anyone using PayPal today just hasn't learned their lesson yet.
It seems like eBay is dominated nowadays by people drop-shipping products from Amazon etc. with a markup, though.
Ah, now the downsides of everything being political become apparent -- when it goes against them.
PayPal is huge. It's not suprising that there would be some horror stories. What matters is how frequent they are given the number of accounts and/or transactions, and I've never come across any actual data on this. I suspect it doesn't exist.
If I can make a few phone calls, verify some ai-flagged transaction is legit, and clear things up in a few days max, then the occasional screw up is just a fact of life.
If I have to talk to a brick wall for months or years and have my money frozen for paper thin reasons and the side who made the mistake takes no responsibility, then it doesn't really matter how rare it is. I'm not touching that business.
I've been using PayPal for almost all of my income for more than 12 years. I've never had a notable financial screw up on their part, and these days whenever I need to call them I get a real human on the phone in a few minutes (even during covid-19). Most issues get solved in minutes to days (the latter if there's a problem on their end, such as instant payment notifications getting stalled).
But this information is useless - just another anecdote.
Nobody except PayPal really knows how things look statistically speaking.
For myself, until someone else has a micropayments fee schedule like PayPal, I'm stuck with them.
I fail to see how the claim is ridiculous.
If you release more, you have more suspect dangerous criminals on the streets.
For minor crimes (and in some places major crimes) they go to jail; the main jail/prison distinction in the US is that the former tends to be city or county and include pretrial detention and the latter tends to be state or federal and exclude pretrial detention. But jails, while they include pretrial detention, also include people serving sentences.
> The state has to actually prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that you, the accused, committed the crime.
No, the required proof is beyond a reasonable doubt.
>Although the Eighth Amendment protects against excessive bail, there is not an absolute right to bail, as noted in The Bail Reform Act, 18 USC Chapter 207 (1984). Section 3142 of the Act denies bail to certain defendants pending trial, specifically denying bail to defendants likely to flee or pose a danger to society.
* Person A and Person B commit an identical crime.
* Person B is released because they have 10,000$ for bail
* Person A doesn't have 10,000$ and because of this they cannot work and instead must stay in jail
The point is that people don't consider Person A dangerous, and the only difference is how much money they have access to - so why is Person B dangerous and not A?
A & B might both be dangerous. I would rather have 100 on the street instead of 200.
Nothing like taking "the poor" off the streets and then keeping them in jail because they don't have family who, even if they have money in the first place, can take time off work to go down to the courthouse and to deliver a bail.
You should then also oppose bail. So that the people you believe dangerous can't just "buy" their way out.
Many people would disagree with you on the danger level, but I'm not sure why you're making an argument against people complaining about the concept of bail.
Also, person A _might_ be dangerous is in some way putting at least part of the punishment before conviction - IMO that should be very carefully considered, and I don't see how monetary means is a large part of that.
Not even this. They are alleged to have committed the crime, but have not been tried in court.
These people were accused of crimes, which is different.
There are cases where the defendant is in jail pending trial gets a bail set and can’t afford it, then gets a plea that would result in his release so he takes it...but that in no way is the primary purpose of the bail to force the plea. I don’t think you would ever find such a case where the defendant hasn’t waived their right to a speedy trial. But feel free to link such a case.
Instead we see people who are very poor getting five digit bails, and instead languishing in jail because they can’t afford bail.
Pre trial detention should be based on the public good, and that is clearly not what we have today.
Nearly 40% of all defendants out on bail are ROR (no money required). Maybe it should be more or “more aggressive”, but few in my experience know that much or what ROR even is.
Bail is otherwise pretty uniform (within each jurisdiction) based on the charges (sometimes a defendants past charges will be considered in the amount as well as ability to abscond).
I see your point about matching the bail to the defendants resources...but it would just encourage attempts to abscond and skip trial. I was the victim of a kidnapping and the defendant got bail ($350k or so) and posted bond (paid 10% to a bondsman and they postEd the full amount). In reality the defendants mom posted the bail, the amount (even though not his money) was a deterrent for skipping trial, but he had nothing so if the amount was say $350 instead of $350k there would be no reason for him not to attempt to abscond, but even he wouldn’t run and harm his own mother financially. Still within 7 days Of posting bail and being released he violated the terms of his bail and was rearrested anyway.
Also, unless they were convicted of previous crimes, they weren't "criminals".
If they were arrested then statistically speaking they are far more likely than the average person to be criminals.
I feel like one of the ultimate sources of tension in western society today is that one side puts far too much faith into the good in people, a perspective that can only come from ivory tower privilege. This comment is a perfect example.
Sure, those who disagree will claim that the real problem is the opposite, but my point is that the side of the protestors lacks nuance in their worldview; often people are bad and you can't just blindly blame society for every criminal.
Or just have the wrong skin complexion. Getting arrested doesn't increase one's chances of being a criminal, that's not how reality or statistics work. It just increases their chance of being in jail by about 100% but they still have very much the same chances of being a criminal as they did right before being arrested.
That was never the comparison - the bit you didn't quote was "than those who had bailed out for the same crimes". According to your argument, they are _also_ more likely than the average person to be criminals, yet we bail them out.
[0] https://www.staradvertiser.com/2020/05/21/hawaii-news/dozens...
What's an alternative proposal for how to tilt the balance of incentive/disincentive so that they do not go on the run?
Or is the whole question malformed and ill-conceived?
The solutions are always easier said than done. This is an institutional and societal problem and one that other western societies managed to work around. Of course taking them as a model is considered insulting so here we are.
However, the police/DA can accuse an innocent person of a serious crime. You should not be imprisoned before you are sentenced unless that is the only way to make you show up for trial. I.e., it should not be about the severity of the crime, but about how much of a flight risk you might be.
Paypal slurped up Venmo as part of their Braintree acquisition several years ago.
Braintree still exists as it's own distinct offering, but the branding was updated to clearly show it as part of Paypal[1].
Venmo is also operated under its own brand as an independent/distinct product offering, and unlike Braintree it never had its branding updated to tie it to the Paypal portfolio. The only place you'll find a reference to Paypal are places like their legalese such as the website footer[2], where they note they're a service of Paypal and Paypal is the actual provider of all money transmission activities within Venmo.
So they're spoken about independently because from the consumer standpoint they are (independent apps, independent accounts, different capabilities/limitations, etc). But they're having the same issues because the root cause is part of the same shared money transmission systems/policies.
[1] See the header logo https://www.braintreepayments.com/
Can you even use venmo to send money to people to write checks on behalf of third parties? I thought there was lots of restrictions on that type of activity in general and limits in these person to person platforms in particular.
Are these folks setup as approved businesses with venmo / paypal / stripe etc? I've had good luck moving large volumes if you are a legit large business not violating TOS. Note that accepting money to write checks for third parties is almost always a violation.
These are withdrawal limit and/or fraud detection issues that would apply equally to other organizations using Venmo or Paypal. I suspect this isn't just a matter of these companies clicking a checkbox; many of these limits are likely required by their banking partners or regulations.
For example, PayPal's implementation of OFAC blacklisting is a braindead loose string match on ANY field that therefore has a huge false positive rate.
Compliance with OFAC is mandatory. Doing it in a stupid way is not.
Can we stop using PayPal for this sort of thing? Every time there’s a news story about PP locking accounts for fraud checks. Every time. At a certain point it’s just PayPal’s policy to lock charitable accounts, it’s on you if you use them anyway.
I don't think there's a financial institution the country that is going to allow that without restrictions, for reasons that should be obvious.
There literally exist people in this world that believe "doing something" is more important than planning, and that is the kind of person involved with these efforts here.
Is it even worth writing a solution here? Whats the best way to reach that group? I can imagine they just told their supporters to venmo them, instead of actually ACH or wire transfer to their organization's bank account - assuming they even have one set up under an entity or foundation.
Imagine being so unprepared that you don't even know the regulations creating the problem and misdirect that angst to Venmopal.
Never mind that there may be hidden class issues, you need a certain amount of money and privilege to set up DBAs (as well as time, which, again, people may not necessarily have because who the hell anticipated any of this past month), and part of the reason these protests are happening is decades of systemic economic suppression of Black people.
But go ahead, keep blaming the victims because they’re reacting to a problem that popped up as quickly as possible, and running into problems with rigid systems that have a long history of dealing badly with accounts that suddenly explode in popularity.
> Whats the best way to reach that group?
> Whats the best way to reach that group?
Read what you want to read.
Yes, there are a lot of anti-patterns and class-correlated knowledge gaps.
I know how to setup a new LLC and bank account within 48 hours, and it would cost me around $125 - $450 dollars, I would probably also have one on the shelf with a bank account to repurpose already for any purpose. There would be no lawyer involved.
A 501(c)3 exemption is an election that takes longer for the IRS to process. But you can proceed as if it would be accepted, or think about how to classify the incoming money later to rationalize a lower/non-existent tax burden. If they went the charity route, there is more than a 501(c)3 approval necessary to accept from many donors.
I am surprised nobody else in their circle has directed that energy that way. The problems they are reacting to are not bound to one socioeconomic class.
He doesn't. This mode of argumentation is not actually intended to produce new ideas or methods that enable better protest. Instead it is intended to produce an infinite regression of complaints about improper protest to delay change forever.
Quite the incendiary headline for an issue of bandwidth. These payment processing companies were never designed for so many and so large transfer amounts. Vice and others expect these companies to snap their fingers and change something that otherwise would take months or years of development. Quite puzzling, especially since Venmo and PayPal are supporting these groups bailing people out, the only complaint is Venmo and PayPal are not doing it fast enough.