Consumer complaint received 2017-10-10
Company: Paypal Holdings, Inc
State: IL
Product: Money transfer, virtual currency, or money service
Sub-product: Virtual currency
Issue: Fraud or scam

Complaint:
Hi, To briefly state my legal points : Paypal is operating as a financial institution with power of seizure, without legal authority to do so. 
Paypal is committing felony fraud ( possible laundering activities going on as as well, since it seems to be widespread and ongoing ), but just my own money is {$4700.00} Paypal is refusing to release funds, not belonging to themselves, which is called grand theft. 

I have been a PayPal account holder for more than 10 years and never had any major issues nor violated any policies in the past. Recently (XX/XX/XXXX ) I received an email from PayPal support that one of my newly added listings is violating " PayPal 's Acceptable Use Policy ''  and that my account has been permanently limited without an option of appeal. In addition to that, under my PayPal account, they have posted and immediately closed a case where they stated : " XX/XX/XXXX : When you signed up for your PayPal account, you agreed to our user Agreement and Acceptable Use Policy. Because some of your recent transactions violated this policy, we 've had to permanently limit your account. 

Please remove any references to PayPal from your website you 'll be able to withdraw any money in your account 180 days after your last transaction. We 'll email you when it 's ready to be withdrawn ( Your case ID for this reason is XXXX '' Screenshot of this message is attached " XXXX '' In addition to that, PayPal stated : " Under the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, PayPal may not be used to send or receive payments for items that infringe or violate any copyright, trademark, right of publicity or privacy, or any other proprietary right under the laws of any jurisdiction. 

This includes transactions for any device or technological measure that descrambles a scrambled work, decrypts an encrypted work or otherwise avoids, bypasses, removes, deactivates or impairs a technological measure without the authority of the copyright owner. 

This also includes transactions ( WE HAD 0 TRANSACTIONS FOR THIS LISTING, 0! ) for devices that allow domestic video game consoles to play back-up or import versions of games, such as mod chips, game enhancers, boot disks, software packages that remove protections from DVDs, HD DVDs and Blu-Ray DVDs and allow the user to copy the protected information into other formats, and card sharing services, which is a method of allowing multiple digital television receivers to access subscription television services with only one paid subscription card. 

" While I completely disagree on PayPal 's accusations that my company violated any of their policies, especially trademark/copyright policies, PayPal is basically claiming that my company violated their user agreements based on the Transactions which NEVER happened. The listing based on which they have limited my account never had a single sale or transaction, it was added 4-5 days before they blocked the account, which contradicts their statement. 

While I no longer want to be any part of PayPal, they are forcefully holding onto my money without allowing me to withdraw it, in the amount of : {$4700.00} ( screenshot is attached " XXXX '' ) for at least 180 days, which is absolutely unacceptable and is a criminal action against me. This is disregarding the fact that I currently have 2 XXXX stores completely on halt, because of this, which I am now considering closing down as XXXX is like a PayPal in a mirror. 

Now, as for the listing, which they used to steal my money, based on PayPal 's side : I am breaking some sort of their rules/trademark violations. The listing ( which is already removed ) contained a system, built on XXXX XXXX XXXX, with 2 pre-installed operating systems : XXXX and XXXX, which are both under XXXX XXXX XXXX License ( XXXX XXXX XXXX  ), which allows " The terms and conditions of the GPL must be made available to anybody receiving a copy of the work that has a GPL applied to it ( " the licensee '' ). Any licensee who adheres to the terms and conditions is given permission to modify the work, as well as to copy and redistribute the work or any derivative version. ". The unit is enclosed within a similar to classic XXXX ( XXXX XXXX XXXX ) casing, which is freely sold on XXXX and everywhere else, without any XXXX labels and such. In addition, several peripherals are included with the system, which are simply purchased and re-sold. 

Now, if PayPal would let me know that such listing does not comply with their policy - I would happily remove the listing and go on, however, with PayPal completely locking down my account and basically stealing my money - I want nothing to do with such a horrible and criminal company and withdraw my money immediately! 

Mainly, I no longer want to be PayPal 's customer, based on the most recent huge amounts of complaints from buyers AND sellers who use/used PayPal : 1 ) https : //XXXX XXXX ) XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX 3 ) hXXXX XXXX XXXX XXXX ) XXXX XXXX XXXX 5 ) XXXX XXXX XXXX I tried calling PayPal couple of times, which usually ends with extensively long hold times/call rops and when i finally able able to talk to someone - they have no information to provide or anything they could help with the matter. The only thing they would suggest is to email XXXXXXXXXXXX and that they will create a ticket in " that '' department. So far I have not heard nothing, am very concerned about MY money! 

In addition to that, it is a shame, that this so called " company '' is getting away with ripping so many people off. Therefore, I am asking for any help possible to push on PayPal to stop practicing such criminal activities and give their customer 's money back! 

XXXX XXXX

Company response to consumer: Closed with non-monetary relief