I made $200K and PayPal locked my account - <AUTHOR> I'm the creator of turn.js (www.turnjs.com), a javascript library for books and magazines. I released a commercial version in July 2012 and six month later I made $200K. I don't know how, but I made it.
PayPal has closed my account because I don't have a social security number. It seems like I don't qualify for one because I'm just "an international student" from Venezuela.
I have been working really hard to release a product for publishers that converts PDFs to HTML5 for books and magazine with the brand-new turn.js 5th release.
I don't know what to do or where to go. I don't have more money.
Please help.
Any suggestion would be appreciated.
email@example.com
Emmanuel <comment><USER3> Wow, the sheer quantity of unhelpful advice in this thread is simply mind boggling. Hey, let's all hate paypal because they "steal" people's money. Ignoring the seriously thorny legal bramble that the OP has run headlong into with nary a concern. There is a bounteous variety of comments of the form "Paypal sux! {Use X instead!}" Where X may be stripe, or wepay, or whatever. Ignoring the fact that stripe wouldn't help in this case (it's US only), if you go read the terms of service of stripe or wepay you'll find exactly the same things there as are at issue here. You'll need an SSN or EID or tax ID with stripe too, just as you would with a WePay business account. There's a reason for that, and it has to do with the law.

There are maybe only half a dozen reasonable, substantially helpful, and actionable replies in this whole thread (which would put it at maybe a 4% SNR), almost all the rest is useless. If this is what HN is going to be, I don't want it.

As for my advice, it's simple. Go talk to a lawyer as soon as possible, you have a lot of issues that need sorting and a good lawyer is absolutely necessary to get through those issues, and they'll help to put you on the right footing to deal with paypal. It sucks that you have been acting in good faith and doing good work and have gotten tangled in the mess that is the many layers of laws, regulations, and corporate policies that make up our modern immigration, taxation, and financial systems. You have my sympathies for that and I wish you the best of luck, hopefully you'll be able to keep the proceeds of your excellent work without any serious negative repercussions.

<comment><USER4> What, so PayPal allowed him to use their service with a Social Security number, then they take his money because he doesn't have one?

PayPal is the one at fault here. Don't let someone use your service without adequate ID. Tell them and require it before you can use the service.

<comment><USER5> You can deposit the funds without any tax details or linking any bank account. But you cannot withdraw it without one.

If transferring money without SSN is illegal; I wonder how collecting it without one would be legal.

<comment><USER4> Then PayPal should make this very, very clear. In fact, I'd go further: they should mandate that you provide an SSN before you can collect money. It's unethical to do otherwise: anyone who uses PayPal to collect money will want to withdraw it.

<comment><USER6> One, PayPal _does_ make their rules very clear. It isn't PayPal's fault that its users don't bother to read the rules.

Two, these rules do not come from PayPal; they come from the US Federal Government.

Three, the thing you're saying they should make clear is something someone else guessed about, and it's not correct. As long as the number is under $600 a year, there's no paperwork required.

I don't understand why we're all panicking so hard about a set of guesses that people have made. If you just think the situation over a little bit, it's pretty obvious that what's really going on is OP hasn't finished his free tax paperwork, and that PayPal can't hand out money until the tax situation is made legal.

And when you look at it that way, PayPal is actually doing exactly the right thing.

<comment><USER4> Yet they asked him for his SSN. They didn't ask for him to fill in his "tax paperwork".

I'm very interested in what tax laws you believe he's broken though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Concur with javajosh's recommendation to find a California/USA-based lawyer for help. Advice from semi-anonymous strangers in internet forums is worth what you pay for it.

Generally, in the search for a lawyer, you get to talk to many (without charge) for 15-45 minutes each. You may be surprised how widely their estimations of the issues vary -- the law is the law, right? -- but you'll learn something from each conversation, and perhaps find someone you trust with your concerns. Also, legal confidentiality means that even if you've messed up on some tax/immigration/work-authorization/business things, talking with them honestly doesn't mean you've made any admissions that get back to the authorities (unless and until with their advice you decide that's the best course).

If a student in the US, your educational institution may also have a legal aid clinic.

You can probably get an 'ITIN', the equivalent to a Social Security Number for non-domestic individuals/entities who need an SSN-like number for tax/financial reporting purposes. See...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identificat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identification_Number)

...and the related IRS pages. And again, just getting the number isn't admitting to anything or any tax liability. However, it then will be used by financial institutions (like PayPal) to maintain their internal and government-required reporting requirements. Separate from just tax issues, amounts in the tens-of-thousands (and sometimes less) are subject to reporting to control money-laundering from large-scale illegal activities.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, while a lawyer can certainly make a request to PayPal, their user agreements are loud and clear on the issue of freezing accounts. Essentially, you agree that they can close your account and hold your funds for any reason or no reason at all. The freeze can last for up to 180 days from the date of your last chargeback, or from the date they froze the account, whichever is later. As you can see, they apply this policy liberally and always to their benefit.

TBH, you have already played your best card by getting this to the front page of Hacker News. You may well get your money released relatively soon because someone at PP has or will soon see this. It's sad that this is what it takes just to make them be honest, but that is what you get when you deal with PayPal.

Good luck, and never use Paypal again. Use Bitcoins or Stripe.

<comment><USER9> > Unfortunately, while a lawyer can certainly make a request to PayPal, their > user agreements are loud and clear on the issue of freezing accounts. > Essentially, you agree that they can close your account and hold your funds > for any reason or no reason at all.

Every lawyer I have ever talked to formally or informally have said such things may be challengeable in court. That's why you want to talk to a lawyer.

> The freeze can last for up to 180 days from the date of your last > chargeback, or from the date they froze the account, whichever is later.

Again quite true. If it is only 180 days though, that's one thing, but only to the point they are reasonable (again talk to a lawyer). If they hold onto it indefinitely that is theft.

> Good luck, and never use Paypal again. Use Bitcoins or Stripe.

Yep. Use anything else.

<comment><USER4> >> Unfortunately, while a lawyer can certainly make a request to PayPal, their user agreements are loud and clear on the issue of freezing accounts. Essentially, you agree that they can close your account and hold your funds for any reason or no reason at all.

> Every lawyer I have ever talked to formally or informally have said such > things may be challengeable in court. That's why you want to talk to a > lawyer.

It's because it's what's called an unenforceable contract [1], because if they close the account for any reason, that reason could be because you are selling some goods, but PayPal doesn't like it. A court shouldn't uphold that, and I'd love to see PayPal be brought to task by someone with enough money, time and anger that they pursue a lawsuit to it's logical conclusion.

1\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unenforceable>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sad story, I agree with folks who say you should seek out legal advice.

HEADS UP FOR ANYONE ELSE CONSIDERING THIS:

If you are going to receive funds with PayPal and they are going to exceed the 'occasional sale' guidelines (which some people interpret to mean the same guidelines at the rule for sending an IRS 1099 form which is < $600 annually.

First establish your business presence in the US, that means creating an LLC, getting an EIN [1] and establishing a relationship with a US based bank.

If you get hung up on those steps, don't start taking money with PayPal because their zealous anti-fraud/laundering/drug program fires on a hair trigger. It didn't help that the OP is a student from Venezuela which is not one of America's trading partners.

I expect you will lose most of this money in legal fees. However, if the business is durable, and you manage to establish your LLC (that lawyer you got can help with that) then you will make it back and PayPal will back down. As long as the money trail can be tracked and everyone in the path reports it to the Federal Government so that they are satisfied it isn't part of a laundering scheme[2], or if it was they can catch the folks involved, you will be ok.

[1] [http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpa...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpayer-Identification-Numbers-\(TIN\)#ein)

[2] This is how the laundering scheme would work. Some criminal enterprise hires a bunch of third parties to buy your 'widget' for an inflated price, say $10,000 per copy. You sell the 20 copies, get the $200,000, now you go to a coffee shop owned by the criminal enterprise and buy a Double Vente Latte for $180,000 made out of hand picked coffee beans. The crook now has $180,000 of "legitimate" income from his coffee shop, you have $20,000 in "profits" on your amazing Javascript widget, and 20 drug dealers have a bit of software they just delete from their hard drive (if they down loaded it at all). Everybody "wins." So the US Government wants to be able to subpoena your customer list to track the money from the drug dealers to you and then back to the crooks. Paypal helps with that. If you make it hard for them to do that, they keep you money.

<comment><USER11> Here's a related question. PayPal is officially in my country. Can I take money from anyone in the world and receive it in under my country's law?

<comment><USER12> Yes, if PayPal does business in those countries.

There are some countries were you can pay but not receive funds and some where you can sell but can't keep any money in your PayPal account (it's automatically transfered every day to you local bank account).

PayPal wants to do business everywhere it can (that's how they make money) and modifies how it does business to meet the laws it must.

So, it can't do business in countries where the US prohibits it (see the OFAC list) as they're a US company and limits account functions where other laws require it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> From your comments, you had multiple PayPal accounts (disallowed), were in Venezuela, using a US PayPal account, then transferring the funds to a PayPal account in Venezuela, and can't provide a tax ID for the US account. At the same time, you went from zero to hundreds of thousands in payments in just a few months. To PayPal, you likely appear to be a criminal involved in some type of money laundering or tax evasion scheme. I don't know enough about student Visas and international tax agreements to say you aren't _actually_ engaging in tax evasion, perhaps unknowingly.

It's not surprising they locked the account and asked for documentation. The tax code pretty much guarantees they would within a year in order to file the 1099-K on your account. This stuff is serious to them, both from a financial (the potential losses if this money disappears because it's not been moving legally) and regulatory fronts (US Patriot Act among others requires banks, like those underwriting your US PayPal account, to be able to accurately identify their customers). This might not be easy to fix.

<comment><USER14> Thanks, I had never heard of a 1099-K before.

In case others are curious, here's a description of what it is:

 _"Due to the rise of of people making money with the help of the Internet, the 1099-K has been introduced. For the most part, the 1099-K is meant to ensure that income made from power sellers on sites like eBay is properly reported. The 1099-K is issued by third party payment processors, including banks and non-bank services like PayPal. So, if you use eBay to earn money selling, your transactions, processed through PayPal, will be reflected on the 1099-K issued by PayPal."_ [1]

[1] <http://cashmoneylife.com/1099-k-form-reporting-requirements>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sorry to hear about the troubles :(

If this wasn't the umpteenth time I've heard this story, I wouldn't say this so pesteringly:

To everyone: Stop stop stop stop stop using PayPal. This happens over and over again. For once, thankfully, there are viable alternatives out there -- Stripe & WePay to name two (both of which I've had excellent experiences with).

Not saying they're panaceas or that there won't be security/freezing issues from the new guys, but PayPal has a documented, extensive, and repeated history of freezing accounts with large amounts of money in them over short(ish) periods of time.

<comment><USER16> If you have to use PayPal: _regularly_ transfer any money to an actual bank with actual responsibilities, not some fake holding bank registered in Ireland or whatever PayPal is using today to evade tax and consumer laws.

You are not getting interest by letting that money sit with PayPal.

<comment><USER17> PayPal allows itself to pull money out of a bank account associated with the account as required.

<comment><USER18> Yes. The real solution is to have two separate, linked bank accounts, only link one of them to PayPal. Set PayPal to sweep into bank account A daily, and then have your bank set up an automatic sweep from account A to B either daily or as it reaches a threshold.

However, even if you don't do this, PayPal transactions are via ACH (actually, this isn't a PayPal-only thing - technically anyone with your ACH account info (the stuff at the bottom of your checks!!) can push/pull money into/from your account, it's the nature of the beast) and that has many failsafes and undos available, though it is a real PITA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When you say you're an international student, do you mean you're in the US on an F-1 visa? If yes, you might be in violation of your visa terms. If you have not researched this, please start reading at [http://www.justanswer.com/immigration-law/330cd- holding-f-1-...](http://www.justanswer.com/immigration-law/330cd- holding-f-1-visa-sell-software.html)

<comment><USER20> I was an F-1 student too, and here's my suggestion:

This coming Summer, apply for _pre-completion OPT_.

You _are_ allowed to start a company (register a corporation), and work for it under OPT status. I have inquired about this on HN before: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1523021> I also verified with the DSOs (Designated School Officials) at my university, who are authorized to give legal advice on this matter, and they said that it was _indeed possible_ to be self-employed / do a startup while on OPT.

What you should do is:

1\. Apply for pre-completion OPT right away. Once you get your EAD (it'll have a start date on it), register for a C-Corporation after the start date. (Unfortunately, non-citizens cannot start S-Corps, which are actually more suited to startups).

2\. Then get a bank account on the company's name; link that account to your PayPal account, and cash the money to the company's bank account. You can then pay yourself a lump-some "salary" or cash it out via stock dividends.

3\. Since your pre-completion OPT is authorized only for the summer, you'll have to stop "working for your company" at the end of the OPT period. So that this doesn't bite you again, in the meanwhile you should find a different solution to charging customers such as an international PayPal account or some other payment solution that is not based in the US.

4\. Once you graduate, you'll be able to work for you company for atleast 12 months; and if you have a STEM degree (Comp Sci counts as one), you can work for it for an additional 17 months (adding up to a total of 29 months). After that there really aren't any other visas for startups / being self-employed, as the H1B requires that you own less than 50% of the company employing you (the real issue is that "you are not in control of your employment" and that you're fireable -- so even substantial ownership under 50% might be problematic -- but IANAL and I don't know about this. It might indeed be possible to do a startup on an H1B with 3 co-founders. Check with a lawyer.)

5\. After the 29 months of post-completion OPT, if you are not particularly attached to the United States, there are many countries that welcome startups and self-employed freelancers and issue visas for such people. One such place is Dubai, a modern metropolitan city with people from various backgrounds. The DTMFZA (Dubai Technology and Media Free Zone Authority) issues Freelance permits (for $3k/year) that let you be self-employed in the country. One of the great things about Dubai (and the UAE in general) are the _zero taxes_. To top it all, Dubai happens to be a really great city. Other options, perhaps include Singapore and other cities/countries, but I don't know about the immigration/visa deal for freelancers in those countries.

Good luck! If you have any further questions, feel free to reply to this thread -- I'll be monitoring it.

<comment><USER21> You cannot do both 12 months of pre-completion and 12 months of post- completion OPT, you only get 12 months of OPT per degree level

<comment><USER20> Yes, you're right. So if the OP works for 3 months this summer, he can still do 9 months of post-completion + 17 months if he has a STEM degree.

<comment><USER21> can only do STEM is he works for an e-verified company, STEM is tougher to get for people running their own business

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Apply for a TIN - taxpayer identification number. PayPal can use it in lieu of an SSN. This will take you six weeks. In the alternative, consult a local lawyer and have them nastygram Paypal for you.

<comment><USER23> If he's an international student, he's only allowed to work on campus. If he gets a US tax ID and files income under that, his library sales will count as off-campus income (I think?). So I'm not sure if this is an option. Of course, IANAL.

<comment><USER9> But that depends. I would suggest talking with an immigration lawyer. Surely the fact that such is non-tangible sales over the internet should allow some reasonable solution.

I have founded businesses with people from other countries and I have never had trouble with immigration laws provided that people weren't doing billable labor for customers in countries where they weren't supposed to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> You have $200k sitting in your paypal account? Don't you have a bank account? What country are you in? What exactly did they say to you? How you mean you 'don't know how' you made $200k - you didn't expect to sell so much, or you sold $200k in one go with no idea who gave it to you? This seriously needs more information.

<comment><USER25> It's always a shame stories like this get so much attention. Lots of 'PayPal is evil' comments. A completely one sided 'I'm so innocent I didn't understand' perspective. All companies have issues once in awhile. I get that people are especially sensitive with PayPal because they deal with money and are huge. But come on. If you at all expect to be making more than even a few hundred dollars a month there's an onus on the 'victim' to read up on what they're doing and set things up in an appropriate manner. This situation sucks but it'd be nice if there was a balanced view on it and more helpful dialogue than 'Never use them! Go to court!'

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Hey Emmanuel - Saumil Mehta here from LocBox, we spoke a few months ago on the phone.

I would urge you to simply hire an excellent immigration lawyer to figure out your options w.r.t. the F-1 before you move forward. I have a San Francisco- based firm that I can refer you to if you like. They are (somewhat) expensive but they do deliver good results and they are not a big faceless firm - fast, efficient, get on the phone quickly.

Email me if you want to talk more. FWIW, I dealt with our dysfunctional immigration system for a decade - once having to forfeit a well-paying internship after forgetting to file a dumb piece of paperwork - so I do understand the pain of getting the shaft after busting ass, primarily because of immigration reasons.

Anyhow, hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER27> The comments here are good.

One point not addressed in the comments is that whether PayPal ever gives you the money back or not, OP has earned $200,000 in income while in the United States and he owes the IRS and possibly the state government as well full US income tax on this amount since he was in the US at the time he did this work. It doesn't matter what his visa situation is, that has nothing at all to do with if he owes taxes. He is required to file an income tax return this year, and pay the taxes, end of story. If he doesn't pay the taxes, he might go to jail and probably will get a felony record and be permanently banned from returning to the US after release.

So this is a pretty serious problem and requires a legal team, which undoubtedly will cost the full amount on deposit to untangle.

He can't just walk away from the situation and let PayPal keep the money, unless he can get the amount he owes in taxes from a relative and pay it, which then puts him into debt.

<comment><USER28> Instead of all the negative comments about Paypal (I still use them, but I make sure I withdraw money at least every month, in busy times more often), I would suggest not going to the US without stuff like this covered and enough money & insurance to defend yourself. It seems the US is overly aggressive in most legal matters and doesn't really consider the circumstances too much (I don't know if this is overall true, but it seems so from everything I have read). This could ruin a person's life while he only wanted to make some money; it should be possible to explain that and get some understanding instead of threats, bills of lawyers, putting his family in debt for paying his legal fees. He simply didn't know the consequences of what he was doing in trusting Paypal. That's not his fault and he shouldn't be punished for that by a crippled, lawyers take all, 'justice' system.

I'm wondering; when I travel abroad for longer times I have law assistance insurance; it's not expensive and, in his case, it would pay the lawyers for me (set aside some self risk of around E500 one-off per case); isn't this normal for people to close before going that long (and thus more risky) to the US?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think there is a problem here. If you are saying you do not how how you made it then there might be truly something wrong with your account. It is rare for any open source project that is a js widget essentially to pull in 200k in six months. I think there is a bit more information at work here and you are leaving it out. I think what Paypal did was justified while they investigate what is going on.

<comment><AUTHOR> When I said, I didn't know how I was referring to the fact that I never expected that.

I started turn.js as a weekend hack with html5. Then, I showed it on HN and asked for a Job. Later, I went to some tech company, I didn't get forward for whatever reasons. Turn.js was initially MIT licensed, and I had literally no money. However, some people were making 30k or more selling my javascript on some marketplaces, so I decided to stop and get back my credits. I created a commercial license, and everything started to change. I never enjoyed my money, I came to the U.S. because I needed a degree...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Contact one of the Silicon Valley law firms that's used to dealing with these things. Don't go to some cheapo ambulance chasing lawyer who doesn't know what to do. Even if you cough up $20k in fees to a law firm it's worth doing. They'll help you set up a company for your product and steer everything through that to unlock your funds. A lot of advice on here is overly negative and misinformed. As someone who has had to deal with changes of legal status, setting up companies as a foreigner, and has dealt with the hell of PayPal account freezing, I can assure you this is fixable if you work with a reputable experienced law firm.

</comment><comment><USER31> Disclaimer: I have a love hate relationship with Paypal. My organization runs most of our payment processes through Paypal.

With that said, some questions:

1) How were you able to process 30k/month through Paypal out of the gate without providing a government ID?

2) How much of the 200K were you able to withdrawal? If any? Do you have any of it in cash?

3) Did you experience an abnormal amount of chargebacks?

I'd love to hear your thoughts.....

<comment><AUTHOR> 33K while I was in Venezuela. I had an old U.S. account, so I wanted to change it to Venezuela. My PayPal U.S. account had crazy address like: Avenida GRGRGR, Estado GRGR, United States. They said to me, you can't change the country, so you should create a new account. I did that, but once I noticed less features in PayPal Venezuela, I decided to keep the same code in my website and move the money from the U.S. account to the Venezuela account. I have 1% or less of chargebacks. My customers are happy.

<comment><USER32> You should lawyer up. Having multiple accounts with intentionally fake adresses and this sum of money may be illegal and punishable according to money laundering laws; and the business may get you thrown out of USA permanently due to visa violation - so you need to protect yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> First, before you do anything else, find a reputable payment provider and switch your payment mechanisms over to that, so you don't keep getting money sent into a locked account. And with your new payment provider, make sure you sweep all money you receive out of any account they have access to as soon as possible, up to whatever limits they have on how much you have to leave around for chargebacks and similar.

I'd guess that PayPal wants an SSN so they can report your revenue to the IRS for taxes. If so, they might accept an EIN or TIN instead, which you can obtain as a business (which you probably want anyway if you plan on doing that much business).

Alternatively, if you are not actually in the U.S. (you didn't say explicitly), you may need the local equivalent instead, though good luck getting PayPal to accept anything that doesn't follow their script.

In any case, the instant you get access to your PayPal account again, get _all_ the money out of it before they change their mind, which they frequently do, and switch over to the reputable payment provider you picked in step 1.

Finally, next time you start doing business with a service, even a popular one, search for negative experiences with that service and take them seriously. You now know not to use PayPal ever again, but that still leaves quite a few other services out there to get burned by.

<comment><USER34> An International Student is unlikely to have a visa that allows them to start a company in the US.

<comment><USER35> You do not have to have a visa to start a company in US. Actually, you can start one without even being in US. Opening bank account for such company - <USER2> what tricky without being physically in US.

<comment><USER36> He didn't started a company anyway. Selling old clothes and old toys in ebay doesn't make us a company, does it ?! What if we sold $200k worth in old toys ?! Paypal would take our money anyway...

<comment><USER37> No, PayPal would ask for your ssn to make sure you're paying the taxes on the 200k you just made. Yes, if you sell 200k in old toys on eBay, you owe the IRS a pile of money.

<comment><USER38> why ? I thought you pay tax by residence in most cases. I know when I worked in US I elected to pay taxes in Canada because I wasn't moving to states (there is tax treaty)

<comment><USER37> I'm assuming you're selling the toys in the US. If you're selling them in somewhereelseistan, then you probably don't have a US paypal account and none of this matters. Unless you are using a US paypal account, in which case, whoopsie, should have sorted that out ahead of time. Don't funnel money through a country if you're not doing business in that country.

<comment><USER36> So, I bought new toys and had to pay tax. After some years I decide to sell it, I need to pay taxes for my old stuff ?!?!

<comment><USER39> Yes, but only on the amount you profited.

If you buy $1000 of toys and then sell them on eBay for $200 later, then you won't owe tax because you had a loss of $800. However, if you were audited, you _might_ have to prove that the toys originally cost you $1000. If this is the only unusual item on your return, it's unlikely that an auditor will bother with it.

However, if you went to, e.g., China and bought $200 of toys and came back to the US and sold them for $1000, then you will have to pay tax on the $800 of profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've been testing turn.js v3 for personal projects and am seriously considering buying it for production use in a business; it's the only thing out there for dynamically-rendered flipbooks. Sorry to hear about your troubles. At that level of revenue, I'd seriously consider charging using something like Stripe or Braintree. Your target audience (developers) won't consider typing a CC number as such a huge inconvenience.

Another note - releasing the 4th release's source code under something like the Affero GPL (or a similar noncommercial license) could drive adoption of that version, since many people like to "try before they buy" - and would like to do so with the most feature-filled version.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe make it work using a different bank system and IBAN payments IBAN is international, you might consider opening a IBAN acount in Venezuela. I'm in europe and i like Ideal much more then paypall. As "Ideal" is much more secure. Other options might be bitcoin, or maybe game dollars wich can be changed to hard valuta like lindendollars ...

</comment><comment><USER42> Emmanuel, sorry this happened! We can fix it... I sent you an email with my PayPal email address and my cell phone (call/email if you wanna understand what might have happened here). I have also sent his thread off to folks within PP who can help lift/adjust the restriction. Should be sorted in no time, dont lose hope :)

</comment><comment><USER43> You should talk to a lawyer immediately. You should also read up on just what exactly your visa allows you to do. Assuming you have an F-1 visa, you are pretty much (with some small exceptions), not allowed to work. This includes self-employment, freelancing, anything.

What you should have done (and this is still a legal uncertainty) is have the funds tied to a Venezuelan bank account, your Venezuelan personal and tax identification. It's a little late for that, however.

Best of luck retrieving your funds. I wouldn't be surprised if you got PayPal to release them (they are not themselves a government, so just require enough information to cover their own ass). But expect to be asked some very serious questions by USCIS. For that reason you don't want a regular lawyer, you main issue here will be trying to convince the US you weren't breaking your visa terms.

You need an immigration lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER44> These sort of things generally revolve around tax reporting. As an international student, you should be able to get an ITIN or TCN which, I believe, they also accept.

</comment><comment><USER45> I highly recommend contacting email@example.com. I've had many problems with PayPal in the past, but they were the only group able to make corrections to my account and release funds.

</comment><comment><USER46> Former administrator of an international student program, here. If you're an international student, you can work for the school (at least you could at mine). We used to give kids literally 1-hour careers sitting at a desk in our program at minimum wage so they could get social security cards. If you were to furnish Paypal with a valid ss#, could you then get your money? That's a lot of money. If your school won't do it, I'd work on tranfering your 1-20 to another school that will.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hey Emmanuel, long time no speak.

I would suggest you go to a lawyer as well, I know how hard it is for us Venezuelans out there. I had a PayPal block once as well and managed to solve, it takes time and a lot of documentation, however it was not even close to the ammount you're mentioning here.

There are alternatives like creating your own company and giving the info of your company to PayPal, that way everything will be as legal as they might need.

Let me know how it goes, best of luck bro

</comment><comment><USER48> So much for the kinder, gentler paypal.

[http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/21/technology/paypal-frozen- fun...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/21/technology/paypal-frozen-funds/)

I guess it was all talk.

Never, ever, keep more than $100 in a paypal account (or as much as you are willing to lose immediately, forever).

Also, if possible, close the bank account your paypal is tied to as they will draw from it as they see fit without your consent.

<comment><USER13> The kinder, gentler PayPal can't ignore the law, the tax code, or serious risks of criminal activity on its platform. They made a commitment to cut the red tape in the situations where it didn't make sense, not to throw out the rulebook and the rule of law. None of what happened here is inconsistent with their promise.

This situation isn't some innocent trinket seller whose account was frozen without reason and without recourse. It's a foreign national funneling six figures across borders through multiple anonymous PayPal accounts even after being advised, by PayPal directly, to stop doing so. Above and beyond the breach of contract and ignoring PayPal's guidance to stop using a US account when he's not a US citizen or even in the US, the activity looks pretty much exactly like money laundering. On top of that, PayPal has its own legal obligations to the United States, which it can't fulfill since he's not providing a tax ID while he's passed the IRS reporting threshold by a factor of 10.

They closed his US account, which they gave him warning he wasn't supposed to be using. He hasn't claimed they are keeping any of his money, and they didn't stonewall him about why it's being closed. Should they have allowed him to continue operating illegally forever?

My opinion of many people has dimmed as a result of the comments here. They say you can judge a person's character by how well they treat their waiter at a restaurant. In the startup world, how fast someone is to trot out a "PayPal is evil" comment whenever the company is mentioned, no matter the circumstances, might be a decent analogy.

<comment><USER48> Now we have paypal apologists and defenders.

I guess that's like how no-one can imagine cops as abusive and surely the person must have done something to deserve it.

I guess we'll have to wait until you are on the wrong side of paypal and then you can tell yourself you deserved it.

Ask yourself who gets to keep the $200k if he cannot jump through their hoops. Hint: it's not the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I faced a similar issue in past having a paypal account in UK. I fixed their ass as it was my own money and they had to pay me in 6months and then they closed my account. PAYPAL is actually becoming virtual beggars.

My question is simple as below:

Why do they let us accept payments as much as we want and when we make withdrawals that time they came to know we have bla bla information missing to be verified???????

Why they can not simply held/limit/block our paypal accounts on the very first transaction we receive so we make arrangements or leave using it???????

I have heard many many complaints where people's accounts got held due to verification pending etc but they all have one COMMON thing they only get their accounts blocked or held when the do withdrawals. Paypal the fucking beggars wait till we make money in our accounts by hard working and once we do withdrawals they make issue's. I believe paypal as a big time FRAUD itself. They should held our account or do not let us use it unless we have all the verifications done......... Do comment guy'ssss with LIKES or DISLIKES

</comment><comment><USER50> Next time, ask for payment in Bitcoin, and avoid these outdated clumsy troublesome international payment law troubles in their entirety.

</comment><comment><USER36> Why do people keep using Paypal ? Paypal is always taking money from people. Always! It's interesting what's going to happen here. If he can't get his money, is Paypal going to have it ? Why is there the assumption this guy is in the US ? Even if this guy was not legally in the US, this is still his money.

If you are young and don't have a national insurance number yet, ask them to change your account holder to one of your parents and give them the NI.

I'd basically create a website reporting this issue to the general public and attach all emails and information you can get from them. Also, I'd change the payment method in your website to something else LIKE RIGHT NOW! You should never, ever trust Paypal! Like NEVER!

You should also report this to the media, they will love it! $200K is a lot hell of money!

<comment><USER51> Like, we couldn't use a chunk of that 200K here in the US to fix our bulging deficit. This is why we have it.

<comment><USER52> The full $200,000 would cover, literally, 1.8 seconds of federal government spending.

<comment><USER51> There are lots more immigrants that could be paying taxes if we just adjusted our policies a bit.

<comment><USER53> Never ask why Eduardo Saverin burnt his us passport and went to Singapore.

<comment><USER51> Probably because the US is becoming an increasingly hostile place to wealth, not to mention the fact that we're a police state.

Singapore is an incredibly good place to do business, I'm not shocked, especially since he wasn't a native born American.

Oh yeah, the real kicker is that you have to renounce citizenship, or you'll pay federal taxes even while living abroad. (True for dual citizens, too)

That was probably his real reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Emmanuel,

If you get a job offer, such as a 5-10 hour a week job at your college, you are ALLOWED to apply for a SSN.

This is what I would recommend doing if you are just looking for an SSN. But do understand that working without permission is a huge no-no.

As far as applying for pre-completion OPT, you could do that... it will take 2-3 months to get approved and you will start using up the 12 months of OPT you get per degree level. If you choose to go this route, make sure you actually register your business with your local clerk's office and report it.

One other commmenter mentioned a STEM extension. The one problem with STEM is that you have to work for an e-verified company.

I hope I was helpful, I am an international student advisor, but I am not your advisor at your school who I would recommend speaking with.

</comment><comment><USER54> Hi Emmanuel, I'm sorry for your troubles. Sounds like Paypal is being unreasonable - hardly the first time. I would suggest a two-pronged approach:

1\. Find a lawyer who can advise you, definitely based in the US, and almost certainly based on CA, the home state of PayPal. As you (potentially) have $200k in cash, you'll have no problem finding excellent representation. Hopefully you can get away with spending only a few thousand.

2\. Select a different payment processor. You can do this immediately. Stripe has a good reputation, but there are others as well.

3\. (Optionally) Post your progress. Especially if the lawyer can give you good advice that is applicable to others in your same situation, you are potentially saving other innovators many thousands of dollars not to mention headaches.

Good luck.

<comment><USER55> How is PayPal being unreasonable? A person without a SSN has received $200,000 in their PayPal account. I would be surprised if PayPal didn't freeze that account.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Is anyone else amazed this guy made 200k with an open source js library like this?

What am I doing with my life?

</comment><comment><USER57> I was always wondering, if PayPal locks a 200k$ account, where does that money go?

<comment><USER13> Typically, to the account holder either (a) after they submit the requested documentation or (b) after 180 days if their account was terminated in order to cover future chargebacks. You just don't read that part of the story because people write about it on day one, not after they understand and have resolved the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Don't you have one in Venezuela? They were more than happy to accept my Greek id.

</comment><comment><USER59> Why is PayPal's policy to wait until the account accrues significant funds and then lock it? If the OP doesn't have an SSN then why wouldn't PayPal block the account from being registered in the first place?

<comment><USER60> Occasional sales of personal property below a threshold value are not taxable, nor do they need to be reported to the IRS, etc., nor do _most_ payments, so creating an account does not necessarily require an SSN/TIN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> <http://www.aaronkellylaw.com/>

Give him a call. He has handled cases for me with PayPal. He comes highly recommended, just search his name.

He can fix this mess without high expenses.

</comment><comment><USER62> Get a taxpayer ID and give them that?

[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpa...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpayer-Identification-Numbers-\(TIN\))

<comment><USER63> That's not a good advice. If you care about your present and future ability to legally stay and work in the US, you should first consult with an emigration lawyer since it appears that you're breaking emigration laws and only then try to get your money back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> What you could always do is apply for an international business licence that allows you to have a satellite office in the united states. The only problem that you would have with that is you would first need to establish a business in your home country. At that point you would be issued a EID or Tax ID number for your business which would enable the US federal government to take taxes out on any profit that you make with in the USA. Hope this helped and I hope you well in all your future en-devours.

</comment><comment><USER65> Sorry about what happened with you. The only why you could get the money is to had the PayPal account linked with one account in Venezuela instead of US. According with your F1 status (and mine) you cannot earn any money in US while studying, unless you get authorization from school to work out of campus (CPT), or after conclude your studies (OPT). Even under CPT/OPT you cannot earn money other from other place than the place you work on. Sorry, I wish you the best luck.

</comment><comment><USER63> First, I didn't know about turn.js, just checked it out, it rocks! Second : You are probably breaking emigration laws. I'd recommend you consult with an emigration lawyer ASAP.

</comment><comment><USER66> Have you tried?: How to Unlock a PayPal Account <http://www.ehow.com/how_7657756_unlock-paypal-account.html> via @eHow

Also, other comments have stated that if the lock msg. came via email it could be a phishing scam. Try to avoid supplying personal info if looks like a suspicious email.

More: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PayPal#Criticism>

</comment><comment><USER67> Hi there. Congratulations on your success, I'm very sorry to hear you're having problems.

The issue seems to be that PayPal are worried you're doing something illegal and are not going to pay tax. My advice would be to get a lawyer so you can do everything required to pay tax correctly. In the mean time, try to get some written confirmation from PayPal that your money will be safe while you are resolving this issue - that last thing you want is the money 'disappearing'.

</comment><comment><USER68> I wont be much help but I can confirm that PayPal does this often and it IS reported upon frequently. I, personally, have had thousands of dollars held (just above 20k USD) for 8 months (6 month hold and 2 months of furious phone calls to get a check cut).

I will never use them again as I believe they stifle innovation and are a harm to small businesses that are "making it".

PayPal is very much one basket for all your eggs...don't get duped! Get other baskets!

</comment><comment><USER69> Where does PayPal ask for an SSN? That doesn't sound right.

<comment><USER13> As of 2011, all payment processors must report the gross receipts of all merchants earning over $20,000 in a year (like Emmanuel) on a Form 1099-K. This form requires a taxpayer identification number. PayPal has to ask for it to file the form. They've also always asked for it as part of their underwriting of accounts that trip their fraud detection systems in some way -- which a sudden jump in payments like this would also do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Maybe they have issue with the fact that you are from Venezuela? I've sen multiple venezuelan PayPal accounts being blocked because they know sometimes they are used for getting around CADIVI (currency exchange restrictions). Maybe your nationality and the fact that you made that much money triggered some flags.

From a fellow venezuelan, hope you get your money back. And congratulations on your success even in this unpleasant situation.

<comment><USER71> Are you in TO?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> INAL either, but I have gone through the ITIN process. If you follow this route you will need to send notarized documents(birth certs, passports). The difficulty is that the US will not recognize notarized by any one out side the US. This was not explicitly stated(a few years ago), after having ITIN applications rejected 3 times, we took the paperwork to the US consulate, they processed it and it was all good.

</comment><comment><USER73> If you are on a student visa you are not allowed to get that money even if you had a SSN. You will be violating the rules of your visa. After you graduate, find a job and go on H1-B you still can't earn any money outside that job. No paypal, not adsense, no stripe. Eventually if you decide to apply for a green card these things will come up and you will have to leave the country.

</comment><comment><USER74> With any money transfer/payment service, DON'T keep money on it. Withdraw to cash every week, and spend or keep in a bank vault. I normally don't even put real mail address anywhere and ask different people to do ATM withdrawals. I am not doing anything criminal at all, but WHO KNOWS? It's always better to be protected especially when it doesn't cost me anything.

</comment><comment><USER75> Find an american friend with a SSN? I am not sure this would really work, but it's definitely worth a shot. Of course your friend will have to count it as income; but honestly this will probably be a lot cheaper than hiring a lawyer if it works. I don't really see a downside to trying this method; since you can't really lose the money that's already gone.

<comment><USER3> The downside is that it then starts to look even more like fraud or money laundering and possible legal action, in addition to the freezing of the account, happens.

This is the worst advice in this entire thread. The money isn't gone, it's just frozen. It can get unfrozen quite easily provided that Emmanuel is smart and makes sure to get a good lawyer who can walk him through all of the necessary steps to get his business set up correctly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> Get any job (#), including part-time and temp jobs, and you instantly get a US social security number.

That said, Paypal are acting like dicks, as usual, since you do NOT need an SSN to open ordinary bank accounts in the US.

(#) You may need written permission from your school to work.

Source: <http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10181.html>

</comment><comment><USER77> Perhaps FastSpring would be a good fit for you. Any country the US isn't banned from doing business with is applicable. Users pay in various global currencies and the order pages are translated. I'm the CEO. Funny that you mention Venezuela, my wife just got a grant to do art history research there so I may be visiting soon.

</comment><comment><USER78> I would get a lawyer in the US. They might think that you're laundering money, until you can prove your id.

</comment><comment><USER79> See what this poor guy is going through? There are a lot of bright people here. Sounds like a start-up opportunity for someone. He can't be the only person who winds up in this situation. Solving this could open the door for others who have the skills to make money like he did.

</comment><comment><USER80> This really sucks. PayPal is terrible for doing stuff like this, and I really feel for you. While I don't have any specific suggestions for dealing with PayPal, maybe you could setup a Crowdtilt or similar fundraising opportunity and link it on your site?

I love turnjs btw. Very slick tool.

</comment><comment><USER81> You need an ITIN, which is the equivalent of an SSN but for non-US taxpayers receiving payments from US sources.

[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Individual-Taxpayer- Identific...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Individual-Taxpayer- Identification-Number-%28ITIN%29)

</comment><comment><USER82> You'll get your money in a few weeks, PayPal are just enjoying the interest for now.

</comment><comment><USER83> I'm flabbergasted by how 200k can be reached within six months with that product.

<comment><USER84> I'm unclear as to whether you mean "Flabbergasted" that it's worth more, or flabbergasted that it's a good amount?

If you mean "worth more" - well, maybe, but at the same time, you can only make as much as the market will yield.

If you mean "worth less" - $200K over six months is OK, but not great if you realize that there will be likely six month period (one year periods?) where revenue will be very low.

It's very boom/bust, and the $200K made here needs to go a long, long way. All in all, you would probably (more than 50% of the time) make more money providing desktop support than trying to sell software (or games) as an independent entrepreneur.

Of course, some times, you hit it big, and it makes all the sweat and toil worthwhile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> PayPal is not as crooked as people say they are. Just start a company with someone in he US. Payments go,to their company and they pay you. Assuming its a legit business "don't know how I made" 200k doesnt sound legit.

<comment><USER53> You realize how much freedom people like you take from regular people? PayPal makes the Sopranos look kind and caring, as do he TBTF banks.

"Doesn't sound legit".... I hope you're caught into the other side of "inverted totalitarianism" and just maybe you might be able to see what the mirror has to show you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Do you or your parents have bank accounts in the US or in your home country? I would suggest working with PayPal to switch your account to your original country and seeing if you can then get the funds withdrawn.

<comment><USER70> Unfortunately we are not allowed to have dollars in Venezuela. Look CADIVI up in Wikipedia

<comment><USER86> PayPal is multi-currency so perhaps it's possible to convert to a currency that will work.

I guess the point is, moving money around is not that easy, country borders make it significantly more difficult, PayPal freezes typically make sense (such as in this case) but PayPal is made up of people, many of whom might be willing and able to help you out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> You can get a Taxpayer Id Number in about 10 minutes from the IRS with basically no questions asked (they want to make it easy to pay taxes, even for sketchy situations). The TIN might be a substitute for SSN.

</comment><comment><USER88> Sorry to hear your situation.

For others: Assuming this problem is solved, in future, can an international student collect payments in his home currency? Will US govt allow full time students to do side businesses?

</comment><comment><USER89> You should contact David Marcus, Paypal's relatively new CEO. At least one other HN thread shows his willingness to help: <http://ndy.gd/JJgB>

</comment><comment><USER90> I don't know why people always use Paypal when it's had a history of screwing people over.

Use Google checkout for merchants, I've used it and it's really really easy to setup as well as safe.

<comment><USER91> Google Checkout closed our account because of suspicious attempted purchases of our JavaScript ebook, and kept our money.

So… nope.

<comment><USER39> How did they keep your money? Was it just a small amount that you couldn't be bothered with so you let them have it? (going by how well your products seem to be doing that's unlikely)

Otherwise I can't see any legal way that they (or PayPal for that matter) would be able to keep anything beyond their transaction fees.

<comment><USER91> Simple: they close the account without appeal and there is no way to contact a human.

[http://slash7.com/articles/2009/3/26/google-is-evil-worse- th...](http://slash7.com/articles/2009/3/26/google-is-evil-worse-than-paypal- don-t-use-google-checkout-for-your-business)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> If you go to school here in US, you are allowed to work on-campus and that will make you eligible for a SSN. Check with your international center.

</comment><comment><USER93> Emmanuel,

I can't help you get back the money that PayPal has frozen, but I can help you keep selling it _and_ ensure you keep what's yours.

Email me - tyler [at] simplegoods.co

</comment><comment><USER94> You can get a social security number with you F1 or J1 visa.... I just did when I got my MSc. For example, if you work as a T.A. or R.A. you get a SSN.

Good Luck!

<comment><USER32> If you get a SSN on a F1 visa, you are allowed to work as a T.A. for a limited number of hours - but as soon as full-time commercial job or 200k of business income is reported to that SSN, your visa turns into a ticket back home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Call Paypal, Don't be stupid to email them, these are useless, when big money is involved. Call them, Talk to them, they will help you out.

</comment><comment><USER96> Sad to hear this, I've used and appreciated turn.js. Hopefully the tax situation works itself out as other commenters have described.

</comment><comment><USER97> Next time always remember to withdraw your earnings no matter how small the amount, once its in an account other than your bank.

</comment><comment><USER98> I once saw a topic where the new CEO requested that people with problems contact him in person.

I thought it was firstname.lastname@example.com, i'm not sure.

</comment><comment><USER99> Good luck buddy. I can only hope you get all the necessary help. That's because I am not in any position to help you.

</comment><comment><USER100> It seems turnjs.com is still using PayPal... At this point you should switch to another provider...

</comment><comment><USER101> Get a TIN its an alternative to SSN for non-us citizen who are doing business with United States

</comment><comment><USER102> Wish these companies could make Terms and Conditions _Human Readable_

</comment><comment><USER103> Hi, I'm not a expert on US laws, but given how it mostly works, yeah you are in the wrong, if they say so. But all is not lost I suppose.

You must find a lawyer in any case, a good one! though there is no guarantee it will work, but if something would work, it would be this or a clear provision/flaw you may find on your own (I take it that you won't be able to)

Three legal courses might work on broader terms, leave the actual litigation to the lawyer.

1\. The lawyer may prove that someone, who is a US citizen, a family member preferably, or a family friend, is the real owner of the product, and you mis- stated your facts. (meaning, you didn't say under oath, that the said service/product was your and yours ALONE)

The lawyer would take his cut in all cases, and if anything, you should give your family member a cut as well, in this case. Its better than nothing out of 200k$!

2\. You may establish a US company, preferably in a state where tax is low and norms are lax, based on strong advice of your lawyer, with preferably the same name as your product. The lawyer in this case would prove (or try to) that the company would receive the money (being a separate legal identity), and a friend of yours who is a US citizen, would be the trustee of the company.

Similarly to above, lawyer will get his cut, your friend would do as well (unless he is the nicest guy on the planet, if he does not take any money, do PM about it on reddit@rikacomet).

3\. The lawyer, may establish, that there was an error in your understanding of the US laws (which is clearly so), and since paypal allows for you to be a member of any country, you shall recieve it upon changing the credentials of yours, to your native one's. The lawyer, shall argue, that the payment made by your customers, would hold true, despite you changing ONLY your address details.

Alternatively, if all your payments were made by credit card (which might be the case), you may contact, all your customers, to initiate a cash back (where they will legally call back money from their bank, after stating that a huge flaw was made, and the original deal holds untrue) the bank would know its way with paypal, so no worries there, but what you need to worry about is bank making a case against you. So you would need a lawyer again over here.

Disclaimer: Always, talk to a professional lawyer about legal matters, mine is only mildly suggestive in nature based on laws existing in my country.

NOTE: Please be very careful, while finding a good lawyer, while you do, make sure to make it clear to him, that the payment, would be only a cut out of the 200k in question here, and not out of your pocket.

Take this on a legal document in WRITING, with his signature and official stamp heads, in presence of 2-4 witnesses etc. You really don't want to lose 200k, and then also pay a American lawyer out of your pocket!

</comment><comment><USER104> It boggles my mind how PayPal can again and again get away with this.

The ability of PayPal to be a bank and yet avoid being one legally is interesting. If you hold somebody else's money you _are_ a bank, whether you call yourself that way or not.

<comment><USER105> Been thinking the same thing for a while.

We even adjusted the accounting software to tread PayPal as if it was a bank ... The amount of accounting time on PayPal went down. Because it's well ... a bank, without the legal obligations :( and that means we are screwed.

<comment><USER53> For digital goods you use bitcoin, always and everywhere. please fix this as soon as your next release, God what are you thinking? The USSA has become a beacon of INVERTED TOTALITARIANISM. google that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER106> Apply for a TIN. That's equivalent to a SSN for tax purposes.

</comment><comment><USER107> Why you didn't pull your money from PayPal once every week?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> After you get your money back, dish Paypal and use Stripe.

</comment><comment><USER109> This happened to me back in 2007, contact me for tactics.

</comment><comment><USER110> Ha ha. Not PayPal Fault! Your fault for using them.

</comment><comment><USER57> Were you lying about being an american student?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I had an old U.S. account and I wasn't able to change the country. I created a venezuelan account later on, but I saw that the U.S. account provided some features, so I stupidly thought that was ok to then transfer the money to the Venezuelan account. I started to sell licenses while I was outside the U.S.

<comment><USER36> Exact same issue here! I moved to England and there's no way I can change my Country. So, my address is correct but not the Country! Paypal just sucks really!

I just wonder why don't you Emmanuel provide more information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER111> Sorry, they stole your money. This is a big advantage of theirs, they aren't regulated like a bank so they have no trouble taking money from marginalized people.

<comment><USER13> Why does someone always write this? PayPal is regulated to exactly the same degree a merchant account from a bank is. Their contracts are essentially identical, mirroring PayPal's own agreements with the banks that underwrite their accounts (Wells Fargo and JP Morgan Chase). Banks suspend merchant accounts and freeze their money for the same reasons and for the same periods of time, and no regulation stops them from doing so. In many countries, PayPal is considered a bank. In the US, it is licensed and regulated as a money transmitter in all 50 states.

<comment><USER112> I don't recall banks freezing your assets for 6+ months to make sure your business is legit.

<comment><USER13> I do, since it happened to me 9 years ago when I was as naive about the industry as you. First National Bank of Omaha, the largest privately held bank with $17bn in assets, if you're curious. The several thousand dollars of customer payments they had not yet disbursed was held for exactly 180 days before they released it to me.

Do you not recall because you haven't read your own agreement, or because you haven't actually opened a merchant account with a bank before? You don't have to take my word. Type ["merchant account agreement" 180] into Google to see some 40,000 examples of bank contracts with that same hold period written into them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER113> Use WePay.com

</comment><comment><USER51> Lawyer up. This is ridiculous.

</comment><comment><USER114> get a lawyer, get an accountant, get incorporated.

</comment><comment><USER115> i did suggest you ask this question at Quora too

</comment><comment><USER116> i've no idea. But wish u good luck

</comment><comment><USER117> Paypal are bastards, as simple as that.

</comment><comment><USER6> So, I'm going to hold an antithetical position here, because I've been on the other side of this, but rather than panicking and screaming "villain," I took the time to understand what was going on, and I got a reversal. I think you can too, but you'll need to discard the common contempt for PayPal and consider that they might actually have a reason for what they're doing.

.

"PayPal has closed my account because I don't have a social security number. It seems like I don't qualify for one because I'm just "an international student" from Venezuela."

I just don't believe this one bit. People from Venezuela do use PayPal quite a bit.

More likely what this is actually about is that you haven't done the minimum to do business in America, which PayPal told you up front that they expected you to do.

They're not actually _able_ to do business with you, because you haven't taken the correct steps yet. If you say "oh my god they're punishing me for being from the wrong country," you're screwed.

But if you figure out the problem, you can fix it.

Here's the thing. In America, like in Venezuela and most of the rest of the world, you're expected to pay taxes on money transfer. It's an income stream.

The social security number is how Americans track these things in their private lives. Sure, you won't get one because you're not American, but there are foreign equivalents, and they're cheap. We _do_ want to do business with you; you just have to be clean.

PayPal _can't_ give you your money until you do what the US Government requires. It would be illegal. It would make them into a criminal money laundering organization.

I'm not really sure; I'm no tax attorney. But, I think what you want is an ITIN - an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number. They are free, they're available online, and they only take a couple weeks to get.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identificat...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Individual_Taxpayer_Identification_Number)

[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpa...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Taxpayer-Identification-Numbers-%28TIN%29)

[http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Obtai...](http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International- Taxpayers/Obtaining-an-ITIN-from-Abroad)

It's very common in the tech community for people to hear "PayPal shut off an account? They're the devil!" But in reality, this is how America keeps its money from flowing to criminal organizations, and PayPal's hands are tied here.

If you took the time to talk to them, and said "listen, I didn't know there was a problem, can you help me understand what steps I need to take to get this turned around," it's very likely they'll actually help you, like they helped me.

The toxic Redditor behavior is getting out of control. Not every time a large company does something that seems punitive is it actually in the wrong, and in this situation, they're really just following the law. That's expected. That's _correct_.

Also, to put things in perspective, you seem to be frustrated that you have to wait six months to receive five years of an average American's salary. I mean, I don't think this is actually as bad as you're making it out to be, unless you've tied your entire life to taking money from the internet, and can't survive without it.

I think maybe you should consider the possibility of asking some of your users for a little spare cash through some crowdfunding site (full disclosure: I work for a crowdfunding site, which is why I'm not naming options right now, because it would be unethical.)

And then maybe just try to work with PayPal to fix the problem, instead of begging the internet to try to hammer-lock PayPal into breaking the law for you, because no matter how hard you try, that is never, ever going to work.

Try setting up a Google Voice account, and calling them on the phone. If they can hear your fear in your voice, the human will to do good and help will come out, and they will put in effort to assist. I promise. That's just how people work.

Also consider getting in contact with the American tax authority, the IRS. It's pretty common for people to hate and fear them, but they're actually wonderful people; their big job is to prevent rich people from cheating the system, and to support poor people, and your story is very sympathetic. Someone from the IRS will, if you just ask, put in hours and hours to try to help you, for free. That's what they do for a living.

You can choose to assume everyone's evil and out to get you, or you can choose to assume that you accidentally didn't get the rules right, and that fixing that could change things.

Which one of those assumptions you make will very significantly change the outcome you get.

There is a reason that people who expect good things from other people generally do well in life. They're able to ask for, and receive, more help. Bad things are fixed more reliably. Et cetera.

Just make a human appeal. "I didn't know I screwed up. I still don't know how. I earned this money legitimately, and I need it. Can you help me learn what I did wrong, so that I can fix it?"

Give them a chance to be good - maybe even a couple - and they will be good.

PayPal is not the evil faceless demon they're made out to be. International payments are complicated, and people from other countries often get domestic law wrong.

But I really don't think they want to cheat you; after all, they make their money by helping you do more business. Shutting you off doesn't do them any good.

Please consider approaching this like you might have made a mistake, because if it's you, and not them, then fixing it and changing this is entirely inside your power. Taking responsibility means acquiring power. Pointing fingers weakens you.

I hope the best for your situation. Please be safe.

</comment><comment><USER118> question , why the hell would you let 200k sitting on a paypal accound for 6 months ? i dont understand. At least invest that money in obligations, life insurance or something ... even with 3/4% returns it is worth it, you could almost live without working in Venezuela ...

</comment><comment><USER119> Sue.

</comment><comment><USER120> wow, that's crazy? Holy crap

</comment><comment><USER121> Use PayPal - get screwed. Rinse, wash, repeat.

<comment><USER13> If you open US payment processing accounts without US citizenship or a Visa that allows it, take 6 figures in payments while out of the country, then try to move it into an anonymous payment account across international borders, someone's going to investigate it. The tax code ensures that investigation begins within a year, since that kind of money moving has to be reported on a 1099-K. That's not PayPal screwing anyone, Donn.

<comment><USER53> Use bitcoin for anything that's not tied up in an inverted totalitarian regime.

And Dan, look up, check out for the drones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER122> Do you have a cousin in Nigeria?</comment>


Going Homeless and Living in the Computer Science Building  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2011/02/going-homeless-and-living-in-computer.html

<comment><USER2> I spent a semester doing this as a physics and astronomy undergrad and had an awesome time of it. I was already spending nights either taking observational data at the observatory or working a graveyard shift job, I had another job as a physics & astro T.A. and my own shared office in the physics building and ended up usually sleeping in the office, on a couch in the lab, or in the planetarium, and I barely ever even saw my apartment, so what was the point? I had all my belongings in my physics office or my car and I showered at the gym. Letting yourself into a planetarium alone, setting the stars to rotate slowly overhead, and lying in a center seat looking up at them is an awesome hack for getting a restful nap in the middle of the day.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mathgladiator, I salute you. Seriously, though, that was an amazing read and must have been a fantastic life experience.</comment>


Building Standard Notes to be long-lasting - <AUTHOR> https://standardnotes.org/blog/3/building-standard-notes-to-be-long-lasting <comment><USER2> I like the idea. If you are around in 5 years, I'll take a look.</comment>


Show HN: Modulate – Realtime Voice Skins Powered by Adversarial Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://modulate.ai/ <comment><USER2> That video demo is great - is it happening in real time?

<comment><AUTHOR> We didn't have it wired up running as we were recording, but the model does run faster than realtime! We have it running in batch mode for our interactive demo right now, but it can do streaming in realtime with ~100ms latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome! Everyone needs to check out the website! Video demo was mind blowing!</comment>


UptimeButler - <AUTHOR> https://uptimebutler.com/ <comment><USER2> There are lots of services for that.[1][2] They usually start out free, then gradually crank up the price. What's new here?

[1] [https://www.siteuptime.com/](https://www.siteuptime.com/) [2] [https://www.pingdom.com/](https://www.pingdom.com/)

<comment><USER3> I was actually trying to find automatically-updating charts with 1-minute granularity on Pingdom yesterday. It doesn't seem to exist on Pingdom, but this site has it. So that part at least seems nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can you select the geographical region the test is run from? i never found it useful to have a test run from a random geog area. I want to have the same test run from multiple locations every polling period.

Keynote is über expensive but is my favorite monitoring site

</comment><comment><USER5> I hope these are the guys that built this: [https://github.com/fzaninotto/uptime](https://github.com/fzaninotto/uptime) (otherwise they could have at least changed their name)

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice design and intuitive interface! Slack integration is top notch :)

</comment><comment><USER7> SIgh...

        <body>
        </body>

Another page that incorrectly assumes that all user agents support javascript.

</comment><comment><USER8> uptimerobot?</comment>


Discover the best Electronic Dance Music you probably have never heard of - <AUTHOR> http://turnchannel.com/tracks/all_genres/recently_added

<comment><USER2> Is this your site? It looks like mostly static markup. Is this supposed to be a blog or something? I recognize a few of the artists from Soundcloud...where is the music coming from?

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, it's my site. Mostly suppose to be a blog/discovery tool. All of the music is from soundcloud.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Localized HN-like Websites? - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know of hacker news-like websites in other languages? I'm particularly interested in a Japanese hacker community, but I'd like to open this discussion for any foreign languages. <comment><USER2> I am from Japan. Hatena Bookmark, social bookmarking community like digg, would be the biggest community where Japanese hackers share information though it is only by Japanese. <http://b.hatena.ne.jp/>

Foreign hackers in Japan are here. <http://www.tokyo2point0.net/>

Anyway, English speaking Japanese hackers would check the same community with you, I think.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://www.noticiashacker.com/>

<comment><USER4> May I ask what you are using for the site?</comment></comment>


Sharex.io – online incubator for your startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.sharex.io

<comment><USER2> Just so you know, the name is already in use and has been for a long time: [https://getsharex.com/](https://getsharex.com/)

Keep that in mind if you intend to trademark this name.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're recreating the incubator-feeling online, only filling it with the startups the matter for you personally. I'll definately call it a startup community if that communicates it better to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Shouldn't it be named startup community and not incubator based on the landing page description?

</comment><comment><USER4> You need to offer a _little_ more information about the service on the landing page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll present some more information as soon as we have time. Got quite a bit of traffic going on at the moment :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fun to see projects from NTNU here !

<comment><AUTHOR> NTNU is the new Stanford.</comment></comment>


Summer of the shark - <AUTHOR> https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3726 <comment><USER2> I agree with the general point here and it's a good concept to keep in mind.

Where Scott and I disagree is that 'sexual harassment in silicon valley' strikes me as a different phenomenon: preference falsification [0], or 'private truths, public lies' (which is what Timur Kuran called his book about it). It's a model for why some regimes seem to fall very suddenly, and the intuition is: even if people publicly don't oppose something, they might privately _all_ (or mostly) oppose it, but could be waiting for a certain threshold of their peers to say something before they speak out. When someone does speak out, you see a sudden cascade of dissenting opinion from people who were just waiting for these first mover(s), whereas it would have seemed before that everyone supported the status quo.

In this model, all a revolution takes is for someone to get fed up enough to make the costs of dissent seem really low (like Mohammed Bouaziz, the vendor who set himself on fire in Tunisia in 2010). For the subject at hand, I think Susan Fowler was someone whose threshold for speaking out was zero people, but once people saw her dissent, they too were willing to voice their private beliefs.

So people aren't going actively _looking_ for sexual harassment -- rather, it's always been there, and now we're seeing private dissent made public.

I readily admit that one could make this same argument about undocumented immigrants and crime.

[0] [https://www.jstor.org/stable/2232928?seq=1#page_scan_tab_con...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/2232928?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

<comment><USER3> Yea, the post seems a little confused. I don't think most people talking about sexism in Silicon Valley or racism at Starbucks or crime by illegal immigrants are claiming a new or rising epidemic. They're claiming to be drawing attention to long existing problems. Of course one can argue the degree to which these problems are real or not, but Scott seems to be trying too hard to find recent "Summer of the Shark" examples that will push peoples political buttons, at the cost of confusing what he's talking about.

People discussing voter fraud, school shootings and campus speech issues, on the other hand, do tend to claim there's a recent "epidemic" regarding the issues, and thus seem better examples of what Scott want's to discuss.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very true but I don't know if people can use this reasoning rationally. I know a well known news site that gets posted here often. That ran a big piece on how rare terrorism is and how you shouldn't worry about it at all. But then ran a bunch of stories freaking out about mass shootings. I'm sure the reverse situation probably happens on conservative outlets.

<comment><USER5> "Terrorism" by foreigners in the US _is_ incredibly rare. Mass shootings are roughly weekly. [https://www.abc15.com/news/data/mass-shootings-in-the-us- whe...](https://www.abc15.com/news/data/mass-shootings-in-the-us-when-where- they-have-occurred-in-2018)

<comment><USER4> Almost all of that is inner city gang crime. And looking at those reported incidents, most of them failed to kill even a single person. The big random shootings that make the national news are _extremely_ rare and make up a tiny percentage of all murders.

The deaths from terrorism work out to around 200 per year. Which is on the same order and possibly greater than the mass shooting deaths. And that doesn't even take into account the massive amounts of money and effort we spend on keeping that number low.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What does "Motte and bailey" mean in this context?

I looked it up[1] and it's about defensive architecture in 10th-century castles. How does that fit in a "mental toolkit across almost every subject"?

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and- bailey_castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_castle)

<comment><USER7> [http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another- bric...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/03/all-in-all-another-brick-in-the- motte/)

Once you start recognizing it, you see it everywhere.

<comment><USER6> Thanks. That article strangely failed to explain (at least to me) the meanings of the words in the medieval castle sense, but it explained the way its used elsewhere.

<comment><USER8> The simplest way to understand the castle is with an image: [https://www.google.com/search?q=motte-and- bailey&tbm=isch](https://www.google.com/search?q=motte-and-bailey&tbm=isch)

You'll notice they have two defended areas - an easy-to-defend keep on raised earthwork, and a harder-to-defend courtyard ('bailey') covering a much broader area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I fear it will only get worse. Dopamine engineering bypasses the rational processes of one's mind, hijacking one's emotional apparatus that is ill- prepared to deal with these kinds of clickbait.

The truth of the matter is, the West is in a cultural, political, and economic decline. It is a bitter pill to swallow, but once it is swallowed, one becomes immune to these forms of psychological manipulation. What's left when you have nothing to lose?

</comment><comment><USER10> > Somehow, we need to figure out a trick to move this cognitive error from the > periphery of consciousness to center stage

To get meta: is not this suggestion potentially a result of the "summer of the shark" bias? If not for all of the media reporting on fake news, election interference and Facebooks bad behavior, would the author still make this recommendation? As others have said on many posts about the Cambridge analytica scandal, we've known for years Facebook collects and shares all our data; why is it an issue now but not then?

We only have so much cognitive space and cant mentally solve every cognitive bias we have, and can't solve every problem in the world. what empirical evidence is there that this "summer of the shark" phenomenon deserves to be center stage vs any other problem? Not saying it doesn't deserve more attention than say school shootings or the cognitive bias of loss aversion for example, just wondering whether there's evidence to confirm this

</comment><comment><USER11> Terrorism may be a very rare cause of death, all things considered, but that's little comfort to the widow of a firefighter who died on 9/11\. For the same reason, someone who just quit their job over sexual harassment by co-workers might not be too moved be talk about how much of a problem it is or is not overall.

The closest I can think of a non-partisan example is talking about how safe flying is as a mode of transport, to someone who had the incredibly bad luck to lose a loved one in a plane crash. Is there a name for this kind of thing?

I agree that at the organisation or nation level, you want to invest your time and money based on better evidence than media reports about sharks. But I also understand that at the individual level, you care more about issues in proportion to how they affect you or those close to you.

<comment><USER12> While we can count terrorism rates very accurately, it is not nearly the same with sexual harassment or bias. Terrorism is very public and hard to conceal, sexual harassment is hidden and costly to talk about if you are typical victim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> >> The risk per person, always minuscule (cows apparently kill five times more people), appears to have been going down.

As usual with reported statistics of this sort, this one ignores the fundamental difference between the "raw visceral horror of being eaten alive by a very big fish" [1], compared to being kicked or crushed by a cow, which is a stupid, but not a horrible, way to die.

__________

[1] Quote from a National Geographic article. Somehow, I remember the quote because it was so much to the point, but I have no way to find the article again.

</comment><comment><USER14> i was almost on board until he mentioned steven pinker, who unironically believes that world war I and world war II were merely statistical aberrations in our otherwise highly progressing phase of humanity o_O

</comment><comment><USER15> It's Eternal Sharktember.</comment>


Twitter can make $45 million with little effort - <AUTHOR>

I read somewhere that Twitter has around 750,000 applications registered. They don't want people to build "clients" because that's their bread and butter, their way of making money.
I say, why don't you charge the app developers a nominal $5 per month per app. The most optimistic figure if all the apps registered right now agree to pay up would be $45 million a year. Hey, that's a good start!
P.S. This will probably draw flak from a lot of app developers, but twitter can always build more features such as app analytics to justify the fee. I have a twitter app http://justunfollow.com and from the point of view of an app developer, I wouldn't mind paying a small fee to keep twitter running smooth. <comment><USER2> Apple charges a 99 dev fee. Twitter can do the same.</comment>