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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

That answers my question, which is how the Russian Flipper Zero company was even getting money from Amazon.

Ah yes the Flipper zero, a device with a _Texas Instruments_ wireless chip, open source firmware (https://github.com/flipperdevices/flipperzero-firmware ), and funding through Kickstarter (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flipper-devices/flipper... ) is all just a Russian op.

Yep makes perfect sense. You cracked the case! We are all so much better to have people like you on the hunt for this stuff. Please indulge us with where you see other Russian conspiracies elsewhere, I'm sure it will help us all!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32739950

Paypal steals people's money all the time, this isn't a valid argument.

From the link you posted:

> our French lawyers (for a French company, and a French account)

> PayPal Luxembourg is now claiming that the CSSF has no jurisdiction over them, because the accounts are French / HK / Australia

How are they Russian?

Flipper Devices, Inc. is a Delaware Corp:

https://www.flipperdevices.com/

The actual source of Flipper is a Russian company. Forming a shell company in the US doesn't change that. Sadly the Flipper team is a casualty of Putins ambitions, because they seem a good team of hackers that did a good job with their product. But the platform and software updates they provide may be susceptible to Russian gov coercion, which is I suspect the risk that many are concerned about.

[edit-to-add] that issue is orthogonal to Amazon yanking it for being a tool that could be used for potentially criminal activity. but maybe added to their decision..

It's also orthogonal to the question of how they get the money. The US entity can get paid, the question is whether the US entity is able to pay Flipper employees.

I suspect sanctions and international finance laws are a bit more complex than that. It could be that a US legal entity that is fronting for a sanctioned country can indeed be blocked from receiving money, but you'd have to get a quorum of international finance lawyers to hammer out an agreement on that to have any chance of drawing a conclussion...

> that issue is orthogonal to Amazon [...] but maybe added to their decision.

So, not orthogonal?

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