USA: Class action lawsuit filed against PayPal

In the USA, a class action lawsuit has been filed against PayPal in a court in Northern California. The reason for the lawsuit is the company’s practice of freezing accounts even without justification and confiscating funds without warning or justification. In the past, there had been repeated complaints.

Lena Evans: 26,000 dollars confiscated

The stone had started rolling the poker player Lena Evans. Her PayPal account had been blocked last year. The company had informed her about the blocking of the account and that the balance of $26,000 would be confiscated. PayPal had not initially provided a reason. Upon request, the company only informed that it was a “necessary measure of the management”. PayPal’s terms of use do state that the service may not be used to pay out gambling proceeds; however, it is not only questionable whether this constitutes a right to withhold the credit, but also whether Evans’ case involves gambling proceeds at all. For example, the poker player also supports the advancement of women in professional poker – and states that the credit in question was donations to the Poker League of Nations, a non-profit organization active in this regard.

Numerous other cases

In addition to Evans’ case, numerous others are known in which PayPal confiscated assets without warning or adequate justification. Prominent, for example, is the case of Shbadan Akylbekov, who sells hyaluronic pencils over the Internet to prevent facial wrinkling. According to his statements, 172,000 US dollars were debited from his wife’s account, which he uses for his business, without notice or justification. Only when asked, PayPal informed him that it was compensation for the violation of the terms of use. Later, on the other hand, the company stated that it was money that would be used to compensate customers who had complained. Again – in both cases – it is at least unclear to what extent PayPal has the right to act independently and collect the money.

PayPal user Roni Shemtov also publicly commented on her case: more than 42,000 US dollars were debited from her account. Upon multiple requests, she received three different justifications for the withdrawal of the money.

Poker player Christopher Bryan against PayPal

Meanwhile, the case of poker player Christopher Bryan, aka Chris Moneymaker, should give hope to those affected: Last year, the PayPal account of the former poker world champion was blocked and the 12,000 US dollars on it was confiscated. Bryan then defended himself and threatened PayPal with a lawsuit – whereupon he got the money back. Now the poker pro supports his colleague Evans in the class action lawsuit.

How the lawsuit will end is completely open. The core issue is the unlawful unannounced collection of funds without any possibility of intervention, in the view of the plaintiffs. They are now demanding not only repayment of the collected funds, but also triple the amount as damages.